Automated vehicles: a technological solution to which problems?

Automated vehicles have been promised to revolutionise transport: bringing about significant improvements to road safety, improving access to and the accessibility of transport, addressing the growing issue of congestion within cities and the list goes on. But are the solutions being built today truly laying the groundwork for that future? The technology may be advancing rapidly but whose needs is it actually designed around?

An automated vehicle equipped with the latest sensors and AI doesn't inherently inform an anxious passenger they are at the right bus stop. It is not inherently wheelchair accessible. It cannot guide someone to safety in an emergency. These are not edge cases but the everyday realities and real world experiences of the people automated transport is aiming to serve.

Automated vehicles present a compelling engineering challenge. Yet without the right questions being asked at the outset, there is a real risk that the industry builds sophisticated solutions to the wrong problems creating critical barriers to trust, uptake and therefore any possibility of achieving the benefits that automation promises.

In this talk, Rebecca presents an alternative approach: one that places human needs, experiences, and requirements at the centre of automated transport and challenges those working across engineering and technology to think differently about what genuinely inclusive effective automated transport should look like.