Decictor: Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Decision-Making in Autonomous Driving Systems
Autonomous Driving System (ADS) testing is crucial in ADS development, with the current primary focus being on safety. However, the evaluation of non-safety-critical performance, particularly the ADS’s ability to make optimal decisions and produce optimal paths for autonomous vehicles (AVs), is also vital to ensure the intelligence and reduce risks of AVs. Currently, there is little work dedicated to assessing the robustness of ADSs’ path-planning decisions (PPDs), i.e., whether an ADS can maintain the optimal PPD after an insignificant change in the environment. The key challenges include the lack of clear oracles for assessing PPD optimality and the difficulty in searching for scenarios that lead to non-optimal PPDs. To fill this gap, in this paper, we focus on evaluating the robustness of ADSs’ PPDs and propose the first method, Decictor, for generating non-optimal decision scenarios (NoDSs), where the ADS does not plan optimal paths for AVs. Decictor comprises three main components: Non-invasive Mutation, Consistency Check, and Feedback. To overcome the oracle challenge, Non-invasive Mutation is devised to implement conservative modifications, ensuring the preservation of the original optimal path in the mutated scenarios. Subsequently, the Consistency Check is applied to determine the presence of non-optimal PPDs by comparing the driving paths in the original and mutated scenarios. To deal with the challenge of large environment space, we design Feedback metrics that integrate spatial and temporal dimensions of the AV’s movement. These metrics are crucial for effectively steering the generation of NoDSs. Therefore, Decictor can generate NoDSs by generating new scenarios and then identifying NoDSs in the new scenarios. We evaluate Decictor on Baidu Apollo, an open-source and production-grade ADS. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of Decictor in detecting non-optimal PPDs of ADSs. It generates 63.9 NoDSs in total, while the best-performing baseline only detects 35.4 NoDSs.
Wed 30 AprDisplayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change
11:00 - 12:30 | AutonomyResearch Track at 213 Chair(s): Lionel Briand University of Ottawa, Canada; Lero centre, University of Limerick, Ireland | ||
11:00 15mTalk | A Differential Testing Framework to Identify Critical AV Failures Leveraging Arbitrary Inputs Research Track Trey Woodlief University of Virginia, Carl Hildebrandt University of Virginia, Sebastian Elbaum University of Virginia | ||
11:15 15mTalk | Automating a Complete Software Test Process Using LLMs: An Automotive Case Study Research Track Shuai Wang , Yinan Yu Chalmers University of Technology, Robert Feldt Chalmers | University of Gothenburg, Dhasarathy Parthasarathy Volvo Group Pre-print | ||
11:30 15mTalk | LLM-Agents Driven Automated Simulation Testing and Analysis of small Uncrewed Aerial Systems Research Track Venkata Sai Aswath Duvvuru Saint Louis University, Bohan Zhang Saint Louis University, Missouri, Michael Vierhauser University of Innsbruck, Ankit Agrawal Saint Louis University, Missouri Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:45 15mTalk | Efficient Domain Augmentation for Autonomous Driving Testing Using Diffusion Models Research Track Luciano Baresi Politecnico di Milano, Davide Yi Xian Hu Politecnico di Milano, Andrea Stocco Technical University of Munich, fortiss, Paolo Tonella USI Lugano Pre-print | ||
12:00 15mTalk | GARL: Genetic Algorithm-Augmented Reinforcement Learning to Detect Violations in Marker-Based Autonomous Landing Systems Research Track Linfeng Liang Macquarie University, Yao Deng Macquarie University, Kye Morton Skyy Network, Valtteri Kallinen Skyy Network, Alice James Macquarie University, Avishkar Seth Macquarie University, Endrowednes Kuantama Macquarie University, Subhas Mukhopadhyay Macquarie University, Richard Han Macquarie University, Xi Zheng Macquarie University | ||
12:15 15mTalk | Decictor: Towards Evaluating the Robustness of Decision-Making in Autonomous Driving Systems Research Track Mingfei Cheng Singapore Management University, Xiaofei Xie Singapore Management University, Yuan Zhou Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Junjie Wang Tianjin University, Guozhu Meng Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kairui Yang DAMO Academy, Alibaba Group, China |