Our second project involves creating a dashboard for an autonomous vehicle. This dashboard should prioritise the users accessibility and experience. Our task is to research and find what is required to assist users when interacting with an autonomous vehicles. Due to autonomous vehicles not being fully accessible yet, there will not be much first hand experience available to use. Our research must come from existing documentation and opinions of autonomous vehicles.
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This design brief focurs on screen based interfaces that enable interactions with autonomous vehicles. Your task is to map out what will be required to assist people in interaction with autonomous vehicles in the future. This futuristic nature if this assisgment means that it will be difficult to gather first hand experience and common usability issues. You will have to rely on existing doumentation found online or in research papers.
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As soon as I heard “Autonomous Vehicle” I thought of driverless cars like Tesla. However, the correct definition of this is a Vehicle that can operate with no human control. The vehicle has a fully automated driving system that allows it to be completely driverless. This means that it can be any driverless vehicle such as a motorbike or a bus, for the project we are mainly looking at self driving cars, however I want to keep the option of considering other vehicles such as motorbikes or scooters.
I completed some research on how these cars work, as much as this was crucial for the project I was also really interested in this myself as I find it fascinating and a little bit scary how they need no human control to drive using technology.
Autonomous vehicles can “see” by using cameras and sensors, which gives information about sizes, shape and position of obstacles surrounding the vehicle. Complex Algorithms analyse the data that the sensors have collected like distance, speeds and predicted paths. These algorithms follow a set of rules to prioritise safety, they process vast amounts of information to understand the vehicles surroundings.
The vehicle also uses a laser called Lidar, which works with a technology called integrated photonics. This laser bounces off the obstacles that are found by the sensor, creating a 3D map. This map is able to measure size and depth of the obstacles by measuring the time it takes the laser to hit different parts of the object. There is an Ingress Protection which blocks the light repeatedly to allow pulses, which help create a high resolution image of the surroundings of the vehicle.
Autonomous Vehicles also have a constantly updating 3D map to navigate its way around the area that it is travelling through. This will tell the car of road conditions, construction sites, accidents etc. for the safest navigation. It will also notify the vehicle of traffic conditions to ensure the best route. A 3D map is necessary as the vehicle needs to navigate safely through a complex and changing environment.
Autonomous Vehicles are designed to make split second decisions to avoid unexpected situations such as pedestrians stepping onto a road, objects falling onto the cars path, animals, another vehicle running a red light, emergency braking etc. There are many situations were an autonomous vehicle and a human driving a vehicle must make a decision to avoid collision or danger to those inside or around it. These situations highlight how crucial it is for these advanced algorithms and real-time processing to be thoroughly developed and tested to ensure they respond effectively and safely in critical moments before allowing autonomous vehicles on public roads.
Autonomous Vehicles can also communicate with other Autonomous Vehicles on the road, sharing data about its movements and intentions. They can work together to create a safer and more efficient environment.
After completing a Sailboat task during a lecture I was more aware of the concerns people have when using Autonomous Vehicles. In my opinion, I would be hesitant to use or enter one due to feeling unsafe.
Safety seems to be the biggest factor of concern for most people, the lack of control for a start would put people off using them. Also, as the car is automated by technology the concern for safety seems reasonable. In many cases software can glitch or have a failure which may disrupt the vehicle resulting in unsafe travelling for passengers and bystanders.
AV are in an environment where unpredictable behaviour occurs, they need to navigate their way through complex situations. This means they have to make decisions to avoid danger such as a collision. Many users worry how the vehicle may respond to these situations, especially with inevitable factors such as erratic human drivers.
Security is also a factor to consider for users. Technology is also known for getting hacked or having unauthorised access getting control of it, this is a massive consideration for users to think about. AVs can be vulnerable to these attacks which may lead to a dangerous situation.
Other factors that may impact the usual function of an AV are weather conditions, if there is torrential rain, snow, fog etc, the visibility of the vehicle may be reduced. This may cause dangerous driving conditions and limit the Autonomous Systems to function regularly.
Ethically AV are not great for everyone, if AV start to become more popular there will be less need for jobs in this industry such as Taxi drivers. This alone may make users not want to use these vehicles. With this loss of jobs eventually impacts economic and social factors.