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Main Authors: Tolksdorf, Leon, Tejada, Arturo, Bauernfeind, Jonas, Birkner, Christian, van de Wouw, Nathan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15018
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author Tolksdorf, Leon
Tejada, Arturo
Bauernfeind, Jonas
Birkner, Christian
van de Wouw, Nathan
author_facet Tolksdorf, Leon
Tejada, Arturo
Bauernfeind, Jonas
Birkner, Christian
van de Wouw, Nathan
contents Safety is a central requirement for automated vehicles. As such, the assessment of risk in automated driving is key in supporting both motion planning technologies and safety evaluation. In automated driving, risk is characterized by two aspects. The first aspect is the uncertainty on the state estimates of other road participants by an automated vehicle. The second aspect is the severity of a collision event with said traffic participants. Here, the uncertainty aspect typically causes the risk to be non-zero for near-collision events. This makes risk particularly useful for automated vehicle motion planning. Namely, constraining or minimizing risk naturally navigates the automated vehicle around traffic participants while keeping a safety distance based on the level of uncertainty and the potential severity of the impending collision. Existing approaches to calculate the risk either resort to empirical modeling or severe approximations, and, hence, lack generalizability and accuracy. In this paper, we combine recent advances in collision probability estimation with the concept of collision severity to develop a general method for accurate risk estimation. The proposed method allows us to assign individual severity functions for different collision constellations, such as, e.g., frontal or side collisions. Furthermore, we show that the proposed approach is computationally efficient, which is beneficial, e.g., in real-time motion planning applications. The programming code for an exemplary implementation of Gaussian uncertainties is also provided.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_15018
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Risk Estimation for Automated Driving
Tolksdorf, Leon
Tejada, Arturo
Bauernfeind, Jonas
Birkner, Christian
van de Wouw, Nathan
Robotics
Safety is a central requirement for automated vehicles. As such, the assessment of risk in automated driving is key in supporting both motion planning technologies and safety evaluation. In automated driving, risk is characterized by two aspects. The first aspect is the uncertainty on the state estimates of other road participants by an automated vehicle. The second aspect is the severity of a collision event with said traffic participants. Here, the uncertainty aspect typically causes the risk to be non-zero for near-collision events. This makes risk particularly useful for automated vehicle motion planning. Namely, constraining or minimizing risk naturally navigates the automated vehicle around traffic participants while keeping a safety distance based on the level of uncertainty and the potential severity of the impending collision. Existing approaches to calculate the risk either resort to empirical modeling or severe approximations, and, hence, lack generalizability and accuracy. In this paper, we combine recent advances in collision probability estimation with the concept of collision severity to develop a general method for accurate risk estimation. The proposed method allows us to assign individual severity functions for different collision constellations, such as, e.g., frontal or side collisions. Furthermore, we show that the proposed approach is computationally efficient, which is beneficial, e.g., in real-time motion planning applications. The programming code for an exemplary implementation of Gaussian uncertainties is also provided.
title Risk Estimation for Automated Driving
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15018