Standardized Performance Evaluation of Vehicles with Automated Capabilities

Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are becoming widely available in the new vehicle landscape, increasing of both vehicle occupants’ and other road users’ safety. In some vehicles, longitudinal and lateral positioning under certain conditions can be maintained, designating them as having either SAE level 1 (L1) or level 2 (L2) automated features. By developing a standardized set of tests to be applied to current L1 and L2 vehicles, while keeping the future advancement of automation in mind, these vehicles’ system performance, feature limitations, and performance consistency can be systematically evaluated. This project sought to develop an easily implementable, standardized set of testing procedures that could be quickly and inexpensively performed on automated vehicles to characterize their feature capabilities and limitations. Such information is useful to private or public organizations interested in a standardized approach to classifying vehicle capabilities, whether for informing the expectation of operators, or for cataloging and learning from the variety of implementation alternatives. Although not the primary purpose, this project may also help inform efforts to develop certification or other standardized vehicle performance efforts. The results of this project showed that specific roadway factors affected automated feature performance and that there was significant performance variability across test vehicles.  The full report is available at https://www.vtti.vt.edu/utc/safe-d/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/VTTI-00-020_Final-Research-Report.pdf