A self-driving mini-bus runs in Shougang Park in Beijing. (PHOTO: VCG)

By Staff Reporters

The first China-led international standard for autonomous driving test scenarios, titled ISO 34501: 2022 Road Vehicles—Test Scenarios for Automated Driving Systems—Vocabulary, was released this October, co-formulated by experts from more than 20 countries, including the U.S., Germany and Japan.

ISO 34501 defined concepts in autonomous driving tests in a standardized language, and specified the safety assessment framework and scenario classifications.

According to Wang Zhao, director of the institute of standardization of China Automotive Technology and Research Center Co. Ltd., ISO 34501 lays a foundation for the establishment of automatic driving test evaluation in future.

With the popularity of autonomous driving, the traditional test and evaluation methods cannot meet the needs of autonomous driving vehicle tests and evaluation. It is necessary to establish a new test and evaluation system based on complex test scenarios.

In 2018, China submitted a proposal to the road vehicle committee of the International Organization for Standardization to develop an international standard for autonomous driving, and was approved to form a working group.

As an important basic standard for the definition of terms in the field of autonomous driving, ISO 34501 can meet the needs of different countries to use standardized language to describe test scenarios when carrying out autonomous driving test evaluation, said Sun Hang, head of a department of the institute.

The terms cover the entire process from scenario acquisition and analysis to application. Sun said it will improve the internal communication efficiency of the industrial chain of automatic driving, and help relevant parties, including the scene technology product developers, users and managers, to establish a unified understanding.

The standard will be widely used in the R&D, testing and management of autonomous driving technology of the intelligent connected vehicles across the world, and provide support for various autonomous driving applications in fields of smart travel, regional transfer and road transport, said Sun.