Meeting 12-9-2024

Present: Everyone

Ideas for the AV experience (brainstorm)

• Add color filter to simulate color blindness to make auditory signals widely useful
• Simulate a critical situation for the AV to navigate, so that it must hand over control to the occupant of the car.
• The occupant could also choose to overrule the autopilot.
• The same thing could occur the other way around, where control is taken by the AV in a dangerous situation.

How to simulate the critical situation?

• Construction work on the road
• An unknown or narrow road
• Emergency vehicles
  • Emergency vehicle communicates with AV through V2V ahead of time, so car tells you to pull over
• Occupant is disabled (falls asleep, faints)
• A pedestrian suddenly runs on the road in front of the AV

Ways for the AV to signal to human to take over/scenarios:

• 1. Auditory: Play an alarming sound to signal the occupant
• 2. Visual: Show a textbox in the visual field of the occupant displaying a text such as 'Please take over control' or 'Take over control now'
• 3. Visual: Flashing a light in the visual field of the occupant of the car
• (iv. Auditory: Have a voice speaking to the occupant informing to take over, such as 'Please take over control')
• (v. Visual: Display graphics in the textbox inside the visual field of the occupant)

Possible driving contexts

Highway driving

The AV could be driving on the leftmost lane of the highway, when an emergency vehicle comes along prompting the AV to move over. There could be other AVs in the righthand lane that communicate through V2V with our AV to create space to merge.

To interplay with human drivers, nonverbal communication could be employed such as changing colors, using blinkers/high beam.

City driving

There is mixed traffic in the city, with pedestrians as well. Due to the lower driving speeds and close proximity to other road users, nonverbal communication becomes a lot more important. As an example, the text sign on the outside of the car can be employed.

Conclusion week 2 (13-09):

The VR experience will start 1 of 3 possible scenarios in which the AV signals the occupant to take over control (as mentioned above). The critical situation which will occur still has to be decided, but will either be a vehicle approaching, a sudden road blockage, or a pedestrian unexpectedly running into the street in front of the car. We will try to see how we can program each of the three cues in Unity. We will start to implement it in the city driving context, and if this succeeds, we can decide to expand it to the highway context.