[Paper Review] ADS Standardization Landscape: Making Sense of its Status and of the Associated Research Questions

Scott Schnelle, Francesca Favarò|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 30, 2023

Safety Systems Engineering in Autonomy4 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a high-level framework to organize the rapidly evolving landscape of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) safety standardization, enabling clearer tracking of ongoing efforts across standards development organizations (SDOs). By categorizing standards into long-term thematic areas, the authors identify unresolved research questions and potential gaps in standardization, supporting coordinated research and industry alignment for safer ADS deployment.

ABSTRACT

Automated Driving Systems (ADS) hold great potential to increase safety, mobility, and equity. However, without public acceptance, none of these promises can be fulfilled. To engender public trust, many entities in the ADS community participate in standards development organizations (SDOs) with the goal of enhancing safety for the entire industry through a collaborative approach. The breadth and depth of the ADS safety standardization landscape is vast and constantly changing, as often is the case for novel technologies in rapid evolution. The pace of development of the ADS industry makes it hard for the public and interested parties to keep track of ongoing SDO efforts, including the topics touched by each standard and the committees addressing each topic, as well as make sense of the wealth of documentation produced. Therefore, the authors present here a simplified framework for abstracting and organizing the current landscape of ADS safety standards into high-level, long term themes. This framework is then utilized to develop and organize associated research questions that have not yet reached widely adopted industry positions, along with identifying potential gaps where further research and standardization is needed.

Motivation & Objective

• To address the challenge of tracking the complex, rapidly evolving landscape of Automated Driving Systems (ADS) safety standards across multiple standards development organizations (SDOs).
• To provide a simplified, high-level abstraction of the current ADS standardization landscape to improve transparency and accessibility for researchers, regulators, and industry stakeholders.
• To identify unresolved research questions and potential gaps in standardization that require further investigation before widespread industry adoption.
• To support public trust and safety in ADS by enabling a coordinated, collaborative approach to standard development.
• To guide future research and standardization efforts by organizing emerging topics into thematic clusters with associated open questions.

Proposed method

• Developing a thematic framework to abstract and organize the current ADS safety standardization landscape into long-term, high-level themes.
• Mapping existing SDO activities and documentation to these thematic categories to clarify which topics are being addressed and by which committees.
• Analyzing the breadth and depth of standardization efforts across major SDOs, including ISO, SAE, and others, to identify overlaps and coverage gaps.
• Identifying research questions that remain unresolved or lack consensus, particularly those not yet addressed by widely adopted standards.
• Using this structured approach to highlight areas where further research and standardization are needed to support safe and equitable ADS deployment.
• Presenting the framework and associated research questions in a visual and accessible format to support stakeholder engagement and decision-making.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What are the key long-term thematic areas that underlie the current ADS safety standardization efforts?
• RQ2 Which research questions related to ADS safety remain unresolved and lack consensus across SDOs?
• RQ3 Where are the critical gaps in standardization that could hinder public trust and safe deployment of automated driving systems?
• RQ4 How can the standardization landscape be systematically organized to improve transparency and coordination among SDOs?
• RQ5 What emerging topics in ADS safety require further research and standardization to ensure equitable and safe implementation?

Key findings

• The ADS safety standardization landscape is highly fragmented and rapidly evolving, with significant activity across multiple SDOs and overlapping topics.
• The proposed thematic framework successfully organizes the current standardization efforts into coherent, long-term categories, improving clarity and traceability.
• Numerous research questions remain unresolved, particularly in areas such as system-level safety, ethical decision-making, and human-machine interaction.
• The analysis identifies specific gaps in standardization, especially concerning data sharing, testing protocols, and societal impact assessments.
• The framework enables stakeholders to identify where further research and standardization are needed to support the safe and equitable deployment of ADS.
• The study demonstrates that a structured approach to organizing standardization efforts can enhance coordination and accelerate progress in the ADS domain.