VEMI Lab

How will we collaborate with autonomous vehicles?

Some scenarios to consider…

1. What if you want to change routes, add a stop, or otherwise modify your trip? Say you need to pull over for an unscheduled snack or bathroom break – how will you communicate that to your vehicle? In other words, how can we get the human intelligence (HI) to effective communicate with the artificial intelligence (AI) at the wheel.
2. If your vehicle needs to charge or has an operational issue that requires attention, how will it communicate that information to you?
3. In a vehicle that contains multiple passengers who may have competing interests, whose needs are prioritized? (Consider a rideshare – you just got in and are running late to work, but other passengers already in the vehicle are expecting to be dropped off first – how do you navigate this?)
4. How will communication and collaboration work for passengers with disabilities? In a vehicle with a human driver, passengers can talk with the driver about their needs. In an autonomous vehicle, how will a person with visual impairment identify and know when they have reached their destination or which side of the car they should exit on? How will a passenger in a wheelchair communicate an accessible drop-off point?

At VEMI, we’re exploring these questions and more to understand how we can design autonomous transportation that works for everyone. Our award-winning, cross-institutional Autonomous Vehicle Research Group is broadly focused on questions of accessibility and inclusion, with other research interests including trust in autonomous vehicles, innovative accessible technology solutions (machine learning, multisensory navigation using combinations of natural language, haptics, and augmented vision, etc.).