Social Acceptance Automated Vehicles

Hello all

Traffic Safety Incorporated a not for profit organization conducted Social acceptance automated vehicles road trials In the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia,

The social acceptance trials were conducted at Various locations

We presented a level 5 Automated vehicle to the members of the public, offering members of the public, a lift to a local destination from a Sunday market where we believed members of the public would be most relaxed.

Steering wheel was removed, and pedals, Our prototype is nothing spectacular just a plain modified ford Mondeo, Manufactured in Valencia Spain for the Australian Market.

To our astonishment only 33% of the public offered accepted the challenge, and when asked how they felt about it, Well most people did not like the fact of having 0 control of the vehicle.

We returned to the drawing board, And Installed voice recognition to the vehicle, We disabled all our vehicle guidance systems, and only kept voice commands and of course crash collision system and lane departure warning system. and Modified Adaptive cruise control. ( navigation maps with spoken instructions were not permitted but visual navigational aid were permitted) The navigation app could inadvertently interfere with the traveler instructions

At a later date we returned to the same location that we had visited previously visited with a fully automated vehicle and offered a fully voice driven vehicle. Acceptance of our challenge increased to a 57%. and travelers expressed more joy in the test drive.

Our conclusion on those social road trials were, a bit of a focus changer to our research and development, While we were researching full automation, We concluded that taking all control from the passengers would be a long process, At our general annual meeting We decided to limit our vehicle Automation to a compromise between voice commands and CAV , Passengers must be able at all times to override the system via a least some safety orientated voice commands.

So at the moment our research will be redirected at developing a compromise between CAV and the Traveler.

Being a Non profit organization we are quite happy to listen to your contribution, and would love to hear what you have to say.