Autonomous driving is coming, here is an overview of the progress of UN/ISO/EU regulations!

Although we think that the era of autonomous driving is still far away, companies such as Google, GM, and Tesla have announced that autonomous taxis will be put on the road on a large scale in 2019 and 2020, which may indicate that autonomous driving is already on the way. At present, in addition to the maturity of technology, autonomous driving also faces the legality of being on the road, and behind this issue is the improvement of technical standards, management systems, and testing and evaluation systems. In these aspects, what is the overall progress of countries around the world?

Recently, the National Technical Committee for Automotive Standardization held the "Fifth International Exchange Conference on Intelligent Connected Vehicle Technology and Standards and Regulations (ICV 2019)". At the conference, officials from important international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the European Union and related automotive industry agencies introduced their respective progress in work on autonomous driving and vehicle networking. Let's take a look.

■ China: Road testing has been carried out and standardization work is being improved

Before discussing the progress of international autonomous driving regulations, let’s take a look at the domestic situation. At present, autonomous driving road tests are being carried out in various parts of China. In April 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued the "Smart Connected Vehicle Road Test Management Specifications (Trial)", which clearly stipulates the test subjects, test vehicles, license plate applications, traffic regulations, etc.

At the same time, in order to cooperate with the road test of autonomous driving vehicles, the China Intelligent Connected Vehicle Industry Innovation Alliance and the National Automobile Standardization Technical Committee Intelligent Connected Vehicle Technical Committee jointly issued the "Intelligent Connected Vehicle Autonomous Driving Function Test Procedure", which stipulates 14 driving functions and 34 scenarios. At present, 20 regions in my country have carried out road tests, involving more than 40 companies and issuing more than 100 licenses.

The Intelligent Connected Vehicle Sub-Technical Committee of the National Technical Committee for Automotive Standardization is responsible for the research on my country's autonomous driving specifications. It currently has five working groups, including highway safety, information security, ADAS, autonomous driving, and connected functions and applications. There are also a coordination expert group and an international expert advisory group for intelligent connected vehicles to coordinate international standards and regulations.

In 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Key Points for Standardization of Intelligent Connected Vehicles". There are 19 related projects in ADAS, of which 6 standards have completed the standard review and entered the approval stage, and 9 standards are currently being established and relevant draft standards are being compiled. There are 4 standard projects in the field of autonomous driving, 9 projects in information security, and 3 projects in connected functions and applications.

■ United Nations: Develop global autonomous driving safety documents

From an international perspective, the focus on autonomous driving technology is mainly on safety. The United Nations has established a working group on regulations for connected vehicles (GRVA), which is currently focusing on how L3 autonomous vehicles drive on highways, as well as on the evaluation methods of autonomous vehicles and the management methods of advanced driver assistance, as well as the driving safety of intelligent connected vehicles. It is worth mentioning that in the United Nations Document No. 79, there are already management methods related to advanced driver assistance.

In the future, another key task at the United Nations level is to develop an intelligent storage system for self-driving cars. Like the black box in the car, no matter whether the vehicle is driving automatically, unmanned, or with a driver, the on-board black box can record all the behavior information of the car to facilitate later analysis.

In addition, the United Nations World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP29) is promoting the vision of autonomous driving safety, which aims to ensure the safety level of automated vehicles and ensure that automated vehicles are safe and do not suffer any unacceptable risks. It is also necessary to ensure that automated vehicles cannot cause any foreseeable and preventable traffic accidents with casualties within the operating range of automated vehicles. GRVA is developing relevant documents for global automated vehicles, mainly based on the definition of guidelines and safety principles, as well as defining the functions of automated vehicles.

■ ISO: Focus on unexpected/non-fault issues

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a global alliance of national standards organizations, including China, Germany, France, Japan, the United States, etc. In ISO, there are two committees focusing on road vehicle standardization, one is the TC22 committee, which focuses on vehicles ranging from motorized bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks to buses, and the other is the TC204 committee responsible for the standardization of intelligent transportation systems.

Standardization work in the field of autonomous driving is the common work scope of the two committees TC22 and TC204. They have jointly developed a standard document ISO22736 on the classification and terminology definitions of road motor vehicle autonomous driving systems.

In addition, the two parties have jointly developed an expected functional document called ISO/PAS21448, which focuses on two issues: unexpected, non-fault problems, such as the sensors on the vehicle not working due to bad weather, or problems with the interaction between sensors, or failures in decision-making and algorithms during the driving process, leading to wrong decisions; on the other hand, erroneous instructions and wrong behaviors from the driver, which presuppose the driver's incorrect use of the system.

In addition, ISO will also use methodology to determine the safety of known and unknown driving scenarios to reduce the probability of risk. ISO hopes to simulate real-life scenarios, especially real-life extreme driving scenarios, to test safety performance during the test. It can test the performance of autonomous vehicles in extreme driving scenarios through random simulation. This measure will be adopted worldwide, and tests will be conducted in different countries based on different scenarios.

■ EU: Three strategic pillars to promote the application of autonomous driving

The EU has 28 member states. The European Commission is responsible for EU legislation and also covers the mutual certification of EU member states' autonomous vehicle standards. The EU hopes to achieve a common vision of promoting the application of autonomous vehicles. The specific strategic aspects include three pillars: first, developing key technologies and infrastructure for autonomous driving; second, ensuring the safety of autonomous driving travel; and third, solving the social and ethical issues brought about by autonomous driving.

The EU believes that there are four ways to ensure the safety of autonomous driving. The first is to better regulate autonomous vehicles and conduct large-scale tests in Europe. The second is to formulate guidance documents for the management of autonomous vehicles based on the technologies of different autonomous vehicles. The third is to introduce a new EU legal framework to manage autonomous vehicles. The last is to form an evaluation strategy.

In May 2018, Europe revised its vehicle management system to support the development of connected vehicles and autonomous driving. In February 2019, EU member states reached a consensus and jointly signed an autonomous driving guidance document, which contains eight principles. The core of the document is how to define the safety of autonomous vehicles, including system performance, conversion of driving tasks, driving data recording, network security, and safety assessment testing.

Currently, the EU's exemption procedure for autonomous vehicles is becoming part of the new regulatory framework. The new regulation was proposed on May 17, 2018, and a consensus was reached on March 26, 2019. It is planned to be implemented in mid-2020. This regulation consists of two parts: one is to promote the widespread use of intelligent assistance systems, and the other is to support the development of intelligent network technology.

EU regulations have corresponding measures to protect lane keeping systems, speed adaptation systems, etc., and the corresponding testing requirements for traditional vehicles will also apply to intelligent connected vehicles. As for some new areas of intelligent connected vehicles, including cognitive systems, longitudinal and lateral control systems, fleet control systems, network security, etc., the EU has to rely on relevant UN regulations. The EU believes that it is necessary to determine the focus of work in the field of autonomous driving and actively promote the formulation of regulations on major concerns.

Summary of the full text:

Judging from the formulation of autonomous driving standards and regulations at home and abroad, at present, the relevant domestic management regulations are mainly in the field of vehicle testing, and relevant standards are also being formulated. At the international level, including the United Nations, ISO, and the European Union, more attention is paid to the social risks brought about by autonomous driving technology, including safety issues, ethical issues, and mutual recognition of standards between countries. Overall, the formulation of standards and regulations for autonomous driving is still in its early stages, but it can be seen that various organizations have paid full attention and are accelerating their actions.