Raunaq Bose Royal College of Art / Imperial College London Innovation Design Engineering
Our transport systems currently
heavily rely on the ability for drivers and pedestrians to interact in a
vehicle-dominated environment: stopping to let people cross, letting
people go and judging whether it is safe to move.
The advent of autonomous vehicles is set to further weight the power
of the road to the car. So far, almost all development efforts have gone
into the cars themselves and how they communicate with each other, with
little consideration for how people feel or act outside of the car.
Raunaq and his team are working on a novel new technology
which will act as a common language for autonomous vehicles and
pedestrians, allowing them to interact on the roads of the future.
Sensors fitted on autonomous vehicles already identify objects and
pedestrians around them – the proposed system then makes a directed
sound and flashes up pedestrians’ silhouettes on displays built into the
four corners of the vehicle to let them know it can ‘see’ them.
Pedestrians can then use conventional gestures to let the car know of
their intentions to cross or not, and the car responds with either
flashing green (letting pedestrians know that they are safe to cross) or
red (acknowledging they don’t want to cross).
The
system has been taught to recognise a number of human gestures (such as
raising a hand up to ask to cross, or to the side to give way), and can
be recalibrated to different gestures in different locales and
cultures.
Rather than forcing humans to adapt to new technologies, the project
aims to develop ways on making new technologies fit with established
human behaviours, to improve the ease of adoption, and make pedestrians
safe and comfortable in urban environments.
