The Safety of Autonomy: A Systematic Approach

John A. McDermid, Radu Calinescu, Ibrahim Habli, Richard Hawkins, Yan Jia, John Molloy, Matt Osborne, Colin Paterson, Zoë Porter, Philippa Ryan Conmy

Abstract: Autonomy does not subvert existing safety processes, but they must be supplemented with methods that address autonomy’s challenges, especially where perception and decision-making tasks are implemented with machine learning. We present an approach to address the safety of autonomous systems, building on and complementing established safety engineering methods.