Automatic Testing of Interacting Autonomous Vehicles

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12452v2
• Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2026 07:23:52 GMT
• Title: Automatic Testing of Interacting Autonomous Vehicles
• Abstract summary: We propose EVITA, an approach that leverages multi-objective optimization to generate scenarios that trigger multiple interacting AVs.<n>The experimental results that we discuss in this paper confirm that EVITA triggers a higher variety of AVs interactions than state-of-the-art approaches.
• Score: 5.10779798572112
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Autonomous vehicles (AVs) must be thoroughly tested to meet high safety standards and avoid endangering both AV passengers and road users. Scenario-based testing implements driving scenarios in virtual simulation environments as a cost-effective alternative to field testing. Common scenario-based testing approaches set the environment and the surrounding traffic and test a single AV. Recent studies show that the approaches that test single AVs miss critical behaviors that emerge from interactions among multiple AVs. Effective approaches to test scenarios that emerge from n-way interactions must address the combinatorial explosion that the presence of multiple AVs further exacerbates. In this paper, we propose EVITA, an approach that leverages multi-objective optimization to generate scenarios that trigger multiple and diverse AVs interactions, while minimizing the complexity of the generated scenarios, to effectively test multiple interacting AVs and reveal safety-critical scenarios that current approaches overlook. The experimental results that we discuss in this paper confirm that EVITA triggers a higher variety of AVs interactions than state-of-the-art approaches, thus improving the likelihood to reveal safety-critical behaviors.

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