Approaches to Utilize Digital Twins in Safety Demonstration and Verification of Automated and Autonomously Controlled Systems

Traveling has already become much safer within the last decades. Nevertheless, there are still too many fatalities due to accidents in, e.g., aviation, road and marine traffic. According to statistics the human factor poses the most significant risk. Hence, increasing safety and reducing the risk to human life and the environment is one of the main incentives for introducing autonomous systems to several means of transport. Therefore, the operational safety needs to be assured when approving autonomously controlled ships, vehicles or planes for general use. Safety assurance, however, proves to be a challenging task for autonomous systems. Conventional methods to proof safety are often not applicable. Additionally, it is not possible to count on human operators to deal with unknown situations during operation. This work describes some of the issues that arise when dealing with safety assurance of autonomous systems. Safety assurance and verification by demonstrating safe operation in simulations is discussed as approach for these issues. Furthermore, possibilities to utilize digital twins in those safety demonstrations are investigated.