Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop for Autonomous System Safety

By: Marilia A. Ramos, Christoph Thieme, Ingrid B. Utne, Ali Mosleh

The First International Workshop on Autonomous Systems Safety (IWASS) was organized by the Department of Marine Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the B. John Garrick Institute for the Risk Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). IWASS took place in Trondheim, Norway, from 11th to 13th of March 2019. The participation in the workshop was by invitation only and included 47 subject matter experts from Europe, Asia, Australia, and the U.S., working in both academia and industry.

The idea to organize IWASS originated from a discussion by the organizers on the challenges concerning autonomous ships’ safety. A natural question that emerged was whether such challenges are unique to the maritime domain or there are commonalities with other technology sectors such as aviation and land transport. And if there are identifiable similarities, could common solutions be envisioned and developed? Answering these and related questions motivated IWASS as a platform for an interdisciplinary discussion on risks, challenges, and foremost potential solutions concerning safe autonomous systems and operations.

These proceedings document the discussions and the main results from the workshop. It includes (i) an overview of the different applications of autonomous systems and its challenges concerning SRS; (ii) summaries of the discussions on key topics held at IWASS; and (iii) complementary papers from several participants.