Ripple - Vehicle Floor Based HMI
How can design help to enhance the calibration of trust in public autonomous vehicles?
Motivation:
As technology rapidly changes and shapes our everyday lives, understanding how humans will interact with complex vehicle systems as AV‘s are introduced to the cities and to the everyday becomes becomes critical.
As designers and technologists we believe that Design and design methodologies can prepare us for the functional, social and psychological aspects of autonomous vehicles (AV’s) entrance to our cities.
This project is aimed at showing how Design tools can assist in calibrating the adequate amount of trust needed for a safe and positive experience and possibly for a new approach to interaction b/w humans and machines
Project description:
This project is a prototype for an experimental HMI, planned to be implemented on Navia autonomous shuttles in future stages of the experiment.
The hypothesis is that utilising the vehicle floor as an interface can assist in calibrating trust and in facilitating the implementation and rolling out of AVs. Given that trust is an important factor in the acceptance of autonomous systems, and influences user behaviour (Lee and See, 2004, Garcia 2015), a supportive user interface is essential – especially in the transition phase towards automated driving, where the “driver” needs to give up control in favor of an unknown feature (Haeuslschmid 2017). This project does not focus on the driver, but on the passengers’ response to autonomous driving, and this is where its significance and innovation lie.
Project Ripple’s starting point is a solitary passenger who boards an AV alone, and needs effective communication from the vehicle. Mapping was a key stage of the process – the team focused on what is lost in terms of human interaction in the transition to driverless vehicles. Drawing on ideation sessions and observations, the team concluded that the following aspects will be impacted by the transition to AVs and the absence of a human driver:
A sense of familiarity, a sense of trust and being in control
A sense of authority and responsibility inside the vehicle
A sense of security and coherence
The needs the team tried to answer result from the driver’s absence: the passenger has no-one to confirm that he has boarded and alighted safely, or to ask about journey information or the progress of the commute, to enquire about payment or ask for directions; no-one notify them about delays and their reasons, provide guidance during emergency situations and a wide range of other information. The project proposes that by providing such information via a new method of interaction, the floor of the vehicle can instil confidence and orientation and thereby build trust in the passengers.
The team then started defining the design challenges and validating them through prototyping. We focused on three scenarios to present and test an interaction system that answers the above needs and promotes desired values:
The vehicle acknowledges the presence of the passenger and gives information to the passengers that is also meant to build and calibrate trust.
The vehicle itself plays a part in the communication between passengers and a driverless vehicle. It becomes a mediator and a platform to communicate with passengers and can make other platforms for interaction redundant.
Each scenario focuses on a different phase of the passenger journey and is meant to evaluate the amount of trust lost or gained at this phase.
Conclusion:
We believe that with good, informative interaction we can assist in dissolving the uncertainty of the passenger and contribute to the introduction of autonomous vehicles to society.
By making the vehicle a platform for communication, we can create a positive experience and build the trust of the passenger by supplying the needed information
Team members:
Bezalel Team:
Romi Mikulinsky (Ph.D.) Head of the Master of Design (MDes) prog in Industrial Design
Tom Reznikov Interaction Designer, Head of Design at Riskified
Guy Blander Product Designer
Ben Lev Product Designer
Ronel Mor Interaction Designer
Naomi Slaney Design Researcher
U.Tokyo Team:
Yuri Klebanov Research Associate, Interaction Designer
Kanzaki Shoichi Master Student
Naoto Takayama Product designer
Shota Kiuchi Product Designer
Miles Pennington Professor of Design Led Innovation
Yoshihiro Suda Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control
Toshihiro Hiraoka Project Professor or Human-Machine Systems