Automated vehicles

What are automated vehicles?

Automated vehicles include both autonomous vehicles (i.e., cars that drive independent of the human in the car), and vehicles that can include some driver assistance features (such as helping you park or when your car alerts you that there's an object in the lane where you're trying to merge). 

There are five levels of driving automation. Level 0 means the vehicle is fully driven by the human. These are not automated vehicles. Level 1 is the lowest level of automation and is generally thought of as “driver assistance.” Level 5 is fully driven independent of the human in all conditions.  

Why study automated vehicles?

Automated vehicles (AVs) are projected to influence key aspects of everyday life including transportation, goods delivery, manufacturing, public safety, and security.

Measurement science and standards are needed to support the safe and predictable operation of these future automated vehicles (AVs), which have great potential to significantly impact our daily lives and improve the competitiveness of our economy. 

What Research is NIST doing in this area?

NIST's role in the automated vehicle space is to address system performance and measurement methods for AV sensors/perception, artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and AV communications. 

To address individual system performance challenges, NIST is developing measurement science and advance standardization in the following four AV projects:

• Testbed for Assessing Automotive Sensor Perception
• Minimizing Risk in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for AVs
• Cybersecurity for On-Road Automated Vehicles
• Evaluating Communication Technologies for Connected and Automated Vehicles

To address overall system performance and systems integration challenges, NIST is developing a combined physical and virtual testing capability in the Systems Integration Testbed project.