PRE2017 3 Groep16
Week 1
Rivelino Wattimena (0967390) Jeroen van Meurs - 0946114 Tim Driessen (0954562) Jorik Mols (0851883) Lisanne Willems (0954451)
Problem statement
Imagine a world in which autonomous vehicles fill the streets. For a lot of people this would be ideal trafic control. However, no human control over the car brings some setbacks. One of these setbacks is interaction with pedestrians that are crossing the road. In today's traffic, a car driver will usually wave at the pedestrians, to show that they have been seen and they can cross the road. However, with autonomous self driving cars, no humans are in control of the vehicle. Then how do pedestrians know that the vehicle has seen them? Also the opposite case is important, how do autonomous vehicles know the pedestrians have seen them? This human-vehicle interaction problem is of great importance for the general safety in trafic. For this problem, we will try to come up with some solutions.
Objectives: Create a safer environment An interaction between autonomous vehicles and pedestrians that increases safety (for all involved) in traffic.
Users
The system will have a set of users, each with their own requirements. These might vary among the different user types. The pedestrians are a group of users that will indirectly make use of the system, by interacting with the autonomous vehicle which has incorporated this system. These pedestrians are concerned about safety and will want to trust that this interaction does not fail. When wanting to cross the road, they should not have to perform actions that are too complex, so the system should be easy to work with (ease-of-use). The driver of the autonomous vehicle (or rather, passenger) also wants to be able to trust this system as well as the autonomous vehicle itself. Since we target fully autonomous vehicles and not vehicles that still require some control of the driver, we envision the passengers of such a vehicle to trust what the vehicle is doing. The driver is also concerned with safety, accidents are to be avoided of course. Our system should be able to deal with all necessary interaction between the vehicle and the pedestrian, therefore the driver might not have to be involved in this interaction. We will have to determine whether this is the case when designing our system. The autonomous vehicle itself also counts as a user (even though it is not human). The workings of these vehicles should be improved with our solution and in traffic (autonomous) vehicle-pedestrian interaction should be safer.
Society
Our society should benefit from our solution. Governments spend millions of dollars already to increase traffic safety. Although we are definitely not at the stage where everyone drives an autonomous vehicle, we expect this to be the future and safety is always a concern when it comes to traffic. What we have to research is where exactly our system will be a solution to the problem. Pedestrian-dense neighborhoods where people are used to crossing roads with little care might require a different tactic then places where there are a lot of pedestrian crossings which are properly used. Autonomous vehicles should be risk-averse and thus might be too careful when driving in environments like the center of Amsterdam, especially when we design a system that requires the vehicle to interact with each and every person that wants to cross the road.
Enterprise
Business-wise the system should be successful in that car production companies can buy and use it in their autonomous vehicles. To get autonomous vehicles more accepted by the public, they have to become safer so that people can trust them. Our system might have a positive effect on this, showing to the public that these autonomous vehicles can in fact be made safe. Car companies could market their cars with this idea and our solution in mind.
Approach
In this project we will determine the problems pedestrians face when crossing streets where autonomous vehicles drive and the other way around. Then we will look at numerous stakeholders and possible solutions. After that, questionnaires/interviews will be held with stakeholders to determine the needs of a system that offers a solution to the defined problem. After this, a design for our solution will be made and a prototype will show some of the working principles that need to be proven in order to give credibility to the final design.
Deliverables
We will write our findings in a report style on the wiki. We would like to deliver a prototype near the end of this project.
Who will do what?
For the first part of the project we will work together as much as possible so everybody has the same basis. In a later stage of the project we will split the work a little bit more. Since we have a student from software science, he will take the lead in the coding work. The mechanical engineers will take the lead in the hardware creation.
Problem description: Tim Driessen USE aspects: Jorik Mols, Jeroen van Meurs State of the art research: Rivelino Wattimena, Lisanne Willems
Coaching Questions Week 1
What are you expecting to learn during the Robots course? Learn to work together in an interdisciplinary group. Solving a problem while taking the USE aspects into account.
What kind of coaching do you expect? We expect the coaches to correct us when we are heading into a wrong direction. Furthermore we expect them to motivate us for the subject.
What kind of coaching would you prefer? We prefer a kind of coaching that does not simply tell us what to do, but asks questions that makes us think about aspects that we hadn't taken into account.
What will the coaches expect of you? For us to ask questions about things we run into, instead of passivly wait for the coach to figure our issues out. Also, they expect us to seriously work on this project, and work as a team.