Towards Serious Perception Sensor Simulation for Safety Validation of Automated Driving - A Collaborative Method to Specify Sensor Models

Perception sensor modeling is essential for the safety validation of automated driving systems in virtual environments. Nevertheless, the community lacks a methodical approach to derive requirements for such sensor models that enables a serious application for safety validation in the first place. This article provides a method to specify sensor models for the environmental perception of automated driving systems. The key of the approach is a collaborative collection of cause-effect chains as the basis for specification. With this collection at hand, a tabular form is introduced to extract the relevance of the effect chains to be modeled. Combined profound expert assessments in the table enable the test engineer to specify sensor models within a traceable decision-making process.