Minimal Risk Condition for Safety Assurance of Automated Driving Systems

We have yet to see wide deployment of automated driving systems (ADSs) on public roads. One of the reasons is the challenge of ensuring the systems’ safety. The operational design domain (ODD) can be used to confine the scope of the ADS and subsequently also its safety case. For this to be valid the ADS needs to have strategies to remain in the ODD throughout its operations. In this paper we discuss the role of the minimal risk condition (MRC) as a means to ensure this. Further, we elaborate on the need for hierarchies of MRCs to cope with diverse system degradations during operations.