A taxonomy for quality in simulation-based development and testing of automated driving systems

Ensuring the safety and performance requirements of automated driving systems is a major challenge for the automotive industry. One way to tackle this problem is a simulation-based approach. However, to be able to rely on results generated by this method, the simulation process needs to fulfill certain quality criteria depending on the intended usage. Hence, quality should be measured and determined at many different levels and areas of the testing and developing landscape, providing information with varying degrees of abstraction. Additionally, quality not only has to be assessed for a complete automated driving system but also for the simulation models that approximate the vehicles' components before they can be used for simulation. This taxonomy provides a better understanding of the concept of quality during the development and test process and introduces the possibility to systematically evaluate whether development steps in this process need to be repeated or further assessed.