A Unified Taxonomy for Automated Vehicles: Individual, Cooperative, Collaborative, On-Road, and Off-Road

Abstract: Various types of vehicle automation is increasingly used in a variety of environments including road vehicles such as cars or automated shuttles, confined areas such as mines or harbours, or in agriculture and forestry. In many use cases, the benefits are greater if several automated vehicles (AVs) cooperate to aid each other reach their goals more efficiently, or collaborate to complete a common task. Taxonomies and definitions create a common framework that helps researchers and practitioners advance the field. However, most existing work focus on road vehicles. In this paper, we review and extend taxonomies and definitions to encompass individually acting as well as cooperative and collaborative AVs for both on-road and off-road use cases. In particular, we introduce classes of collaborative vehicles not defined in existing literature, and define levels of automation suitable for vehicles where automation applies to additional functions in addition to the driving task.