  Autonomous driving confronts great challenges in complex traffic scenarios,
where the risk of Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF) can be triggered
by the dynamic operational environment and system insufficiencies. The SOTIF
risk is reflected not only intuitively in the collision risk with objects
outside the autonomous vehicles (AVs), but also inherently in the performance
limitation risk of the implemented algorithms themselves. How to minimize the
SOTIF risk for autonomous driving is currently a critical, difficult, and
unresolved issue. Therefore, this paper proposes the "Self-Surveillance and
Self-Adaption System" as a systematic approach to online minimize the SOTIF
risk, which aims to provide a systematic solution for monitoring,
quantification, and mitigation of inherent and external risks. The core of this
system is the risk monitoring of the implemented artificial intelligence
algorithms within the AV. As a demonstration of the Self-Surveillance and
Self-Adaption System, the risk monitoring of the perception algorithm, i.e.,
YOLOv5 is highlighted. Moreover, the inherent perception algorithm risk and
external collision risk are jointly quantified via SOTIF entropy, which is then
propagated downstream to the decision-making module and mitigated. Finally,
several challenging scenarios are demonstrated, and the Hardware-in-the-Loop
experiments are conducted to verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the
system. The results demonstrate that the Self-Surveillance and Self-Adaption
System enables dependable online monitoring, quantification, and mitigation of
SOTIF risk in real-time critical traffic environments.
