Notes meeting week 5 (1-10-2024); including notes from tutorial on Friday (feedback from Marieke)

Present: everyone

Progress so far

Theory relating part:

• Document uploaded on the wiki with theoretical background about decisions we make in specifically designing our scenario (see "Ideas for VR based on theory")
• Work out 2 scenarios (or choose 1) in more detail based on this: deontologist vs consequentialist; what does the AV do when control is not being taken over when approaching the accident? Have an accident car in the middle of the road and program with waypoints the route the AV is gonna go if control is not taken over. Consequentialist: program to go around it, but risking colliding with traffic coming from opposite direct. Deontologist: stopping in the middle of the road, harming no one. Include reasoning of mental models and activities to do while being in AV.

Unity:

• Managed to fix the handing over control with the waypoints
• Put the accident car/truck in the environment (car on its side in the middle of the road), it's not yet fixed how to make the AV stop in front of it before it crashes; turn off AI car could be the solution.
• countdown is working, after the countdown is done (5 seconds), the AV hands over control

Next steps:

• When is the car going to stop? and then switch

• Predict seconds before where the car is going to stop to trigger the countdown for the take over of control 10 seconds countdown interval: AV has V2X so already knows it in advance.

• Implement the options for visual cues for the handover, as well as auditory cues (the different options)

• Add a crowd (group of 'ramptoeristen') the car has to pass, but the AV has to pass too close to the pedestrians and has to cross to the other side of the road, so hands over control so the car won't harm people; minimize harm. in such situations, the car should hand over control (regulations/legislation) because it is a critical situation; managed by the city's regulation. When entering the accident zone with the crowd, the car doesn't know what to do or where to go; signals to hand over control (or tries to move around?)

Preparations for demo day:

• Have the VR scenario ready
• Provide supporting presenting slides providing argumentation about our decisions

To do's:

• Luca: look into implementing different visual/auditory cues also with the controller (vibrations?), possibly also look into reverse handover (?)
• Marthe: start building presentation for demo day with theory (see separate wiki page for the link), come up with a survey for after the experience; a thanks from the car for cooperating with the AV and giving the feedback about the behavior to take into account for improving the car's behavior
• Jelco: in manual handover trigger: add countdown and breaking at the same time, and after the countdown do the actual handover of control (5 or 10 seconds?), & fix that the AV stops in front of the accident car to not crash into it
• Add a crowd in Unity
• include papers from Marieke Martens and Pavlo Bazilinskyy for supporting in theory; https://research.tue.nl/en/persons/marieke-h-martens/publications/

Feedback from Marieke (friday):

• Perhaps take into account that the car can signal to the passenger that they are entering a zone where perhaps more pedestrians are crossing the streets, so the car indicates that the occupant should monitor more/pay more attention because the car can get into a critical situation and then the passenger is prepared.
• visual combined with auditory/tactile cues is stronger
• include something about unexpected surprises (?)

Progress in tutorial Friday:

We managed to connect an external controller to the computer and drive with the controller. This can also vibrate, so this can be included as one cue to signal attention to hand over control