Assignment Help on Self-Driving Cars and Human Factors
Self-Driving Cars Assignment Online
Introduction
Problem Context
The self-driving cars are blessing of modern technology, yet it has numerous risks associated with it, as technology is not as intelligent as human mind is. It has been unveiled from the analysis of previous sources of information that AVs have substantial issues associated with it, which could cause accidents, morality and ethical issues within society. Thus, this report has chosen to identify issues associated with autonomous driving such that technological improvements can be brought. Over the last few years, some significant advancements has taken place that has greatly improved the self-driving car technology. Such technology will bring a lot of change in our society, in terms of efficiency, convenience and the overall safety of our roads. However, in saying that there are certain social issues that are associated with self driving cars, that also has to be addressed. Every year, almost 10 trillion miles are driven by cars worldwide, in different and complex situations which would be difficult or next to impossible by self driving cars (Daily. M, Medasani. S, Behringer. R & Trivedi. M, 2017).
Problem Statement and Research Question
Over the last few years, the self-driving cars have been under the lime light and have been discussed with various controversial aspects, such as ethical regulatory and liability concerns. All the major companies are competing against each other in order to be the first one in the market to capitalize the market (Rogers. 2003). They see enormous potential in this emerging technology, however one key aspect that most of them have ignored is the public acceptance of this new technology. How the public see this new technology, and will it be easily adapted is going to be a major concern.
AVs have changed the outlook of transportation industry, but it is not yet trusted by the society, based on the fact that it many has associated issues. These vehicles cannot make informed and rational judgment while driving and any failure might lead to adverse consequences for individuals as well as society. Likewise, the aspect of morality and ethicality cannot be linked with AVs as it is solely linked with human rationality and intelligence and thus this project is aimed to investigate the issues associated with self-driving cars.
The focused research aimed at answering the following research question;
- Can artificial intelligence in self-driving cars replace the human intelligence regarding handling of difficult situations, ethical decision making, safety and morality?
Aims and Significance
The main aim of this project is to explore the morality, safety and social issues associated with self-driving cars, such that suggestions can be made to enhance the safety and benefits of these cars, while minimizing the disadvantages.
The underlying research is highly significant as it has investigated the number of issues which are being associated with driverless vehicles. The insight of issues has aid in recognizing the disadvantages of AVs and thus practitioners might take steps to enhance benefits of self-driving cars. It has been noted from the study of Endsley (2017) that absence of human factors in technologically driven vehicles, causes lack of trust among humans regarding the usage and safety of self-driving cars. The significance of this study has been reflected in the notion that it has offered guidance through which self-driving vehicles can be improved by incorporation of human factors in these vehicles. Therefore, the differences of machine and human rationality has been highlighted and future researchers have been encouraged to further explore the ways through which trust of humans can be enhanced on self-driving vehicles.
Expected Outcomes
The results of this study are expected to highlight that how replacement of human involvement and human rationality from automated and self-driving cars has led to the creation of safety and morality issue in transportation sector. Additionally, the in-depth research about self-driving will unveil multiple risks of these vehicles and it will enable the researcher to extend recommendations through which usability and excellence of these self-driving cars can be enhanced for contemporary users. This research report can be considered as an important paradigm to understand about the functional effectiveness of self-driving cars and thus it might help in recognising the ways through which benefits of automation can be further enhanced for users and transportation sector.
With the help of this research, the results would be transformative. It wont be wrong to say that with autonomous cars would reduce the scourge of crashes that claims almost 30000 lives a years in US and Canada. Mainly because of the fact that computers are considered to be safe drivers, as compare to human drivers. However, if that will turn out to be a reality or not is still has plenty of time to decide.
Background
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) and automated driving technology has the potential to change face of transportation industry. AVs are based on artificial intelligence and technology driven sensing mechanism which aids in navigation of vehicles. The self-driving car is expected to make reality of modern world and thus it is highly important to assure safety and security of AV, such that its significance can be enhanced for society (Urmson, 2008).
Despite of positive speculations and the various potential benefits that self driving cars has to offer, there is still very little evidence that if such technology will be accepted by the end users. It would be really very important and critical to be accepted by the end user, for the success of self driving cars. Many speculations have been made that that some design teams at different high end technological firms will be able to engineer the role of human operator that will help them in removing the human element from cars (Markoff, 2014).
Thus, the augmented reality and intelligent technology has enabled AVs to sense its environment, such that they can move with minimal or no human effort. It has been noted from the prior studies that there are many concerns about AVs and the absence of human intelligence and human judgement is regarded as an issue for defining safety and morality of these vehicles (Hancock, 2015). The emergence of self-driving cars has raised multiple questions about the morality and safety of these vehicles. The replacement of human intelligence in self-driving cars has highlighted issues regarding the handling of ethical decisions, avoidance of obstacles, handling of difficult situations and indulgence of human behaviour in self-driving cars (Kyriakidis, 2017).
The ability of self-driving cars to replace drivers, are also considered as overconfidence in the ability to automate the driving task. There are various challenges in the implementation of self-driving cars that are still not addressed. The technology that is available and can be used to support the self-driving cars is considered to be remaining very limited and inadequate. With such limitations, along with various other difficulties, there are many challenges that the developers are facing towards the implementation of self-driving cars (Litman. 2014).
It has been highlighted by Banks & Stanton (2019) that self-driving cars, backed by artificial intelligence are not suitable for inner city chaotic areas and thus safety can be compromised. Additionally, the accidents caused by self-driving cars can create dilemma regarding legal responsibility of accident. Additionally, it is noted by Shladaver, (2016) that ethical decision making can become substantially difficult in case of driverless cars. For instance, whether the car will turn towards an unexpected crowd to save the passenger or will it run into a hilly roadside to save the crowd and will kill the passenger. Such decisions cannot be made effectively by autonomous cars. The analysis also calls for attention to judgment of self-driving cars, as artificial intelligence might not effectively replace human judgment which is based on rationality and situation context. The instant decision making dilemma is also considerable in case of self-driving cars, as they might not immediately respond to any unforeseen situation in road, such as sudden crossing of individuals (Kyriakidis, 2017). Finally, among many issues, it is highly important to consider that self-driving cars are not easily acceptable and trusted by humans and thus they insecurity with this technological advancement is evident (Endsley, 2017). Based on these issues, the underlying research project is purported to explore the human factors and complications association with autonomous driving, such that recommendations can be provided to overcome the adverse aspect of self-driving, while improving its benefits (Yangqing. Z & Mokhtarzadeh. A, 2018). At the same time the extent to which, the idealized portrayals have already begun to influence acceptance in different societies, there are various unrealistic expectations related to the automation performance that can work as counterproductive for its acceptance in the long run.
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Research Plan
The problem is linked with self-driving cars and its associated issue, which might lower the safety and security of AVs. The main problem has been divided into multiple issues which are linked with lack of human judgement, replacement of human interventions, lack of trust on self-driving cars and questionable ethicality and morality of self-driving cars (Urmson, 2008). The report has aimed at focusing on these issues, such as self-driving cars effectiveness can be enhanced through implacable recommendations.
In order to address these sub issues associated with self-driving cars, the focus has been maintained on exploration of existing information about these problems. Reports about the effectiveness of AVs have been a good source to identify the extent to which these issues are real and can influence usability of self-driving cars. However, it is also notable that in-depth exploration of all of these issues might not be possible in given time span of study, therefore, the detailed exploration of social issues have been carried out, such that recommendations can be provided to resolve the issue.
An important consideration that needs to take into account is the possibility that initial deployment of self driving cars can be slowed, in case if the technology is received with disappointment (Yangqing. Z & Mokhtarzadeh. A, 2018). Many people are having high believes and have high expectations when it comes to building trust in automation, even before using that system.
The research has been carried out by making reliance on qualitative research method, which has allowed to-obtain in-depth insight of underlying research issue. The qualitative research has been supported by secondary data which has been obtained from existing literature and research on the subject. The secondary data has been obtained from different reports which are being carried out by road safety departments and organizations in different countries. Additionally, the peer reviewed journal articles have served as an important source of data for this research. The focus has been maintained on research articles which address the aspect of self-driving cars, human factors, social and ethical complications of self-driving cars and safety and morality of these cars. Multiple databases have been searched and only relevant and most validated research sources will be used for secondary analysis. The secondary sources from recent years have been chosen for the purpose of this research, such that most updated insight about the self-driving cars and its uses can be obtained.
The study has taken place over the time span of 6 months, and whole project has been divided into small activities to assure timely completion of project. The detail timeline can be seen in table 1.
Results
Outcomes
The exploration of secondary sources has highlighted that there are many social issues association with self-driving cars, which make its acceptance difficult among users. For instance, the study of Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic & Pelliccione (2018) has revealed that most important social issue associated with autonomous vehicle is linked with the decision making dilemma of these cars. The research of Talamini et al. (2018) has highlighted that decision of self-driving cars about the protection of lives of passengers and lives of pedestrians is considered as dilemma, which questions ethicality as well as social implication of these cars. Additionally, it has been noted in the study of Holstein & Dodig-Crnkovic (2018) that difficulty of self-driving cars arises in different traffic situations, which can encompass approaching a crosswalk, moving through intersection or making a sudden turn. For instance, the visibility can be inadequate at the cross walks. Likewise, it is difficult for a machine to judge that whether the pedestrian is in actual willing to cross the road immediately or he is waiting for car to pass. It can affect the effectiveness of self-driving cars based on their limited judgment (Frison et al., 2018). This aspect highlights that there is need of more intelligence in self-driving cars, such that their decision making can be improved and question of ethicality can be addressed. The sensors should be more precise, that they can immediately sense the presence of passengers on road and can take action accordingly.
On the other hand, the research analysis has also highlighted the difference in feedback loop of autonomous cars as well as cars which rely on drivers. It has been noted from study of Hancock (2015) that human continuously learn from their mistakes and they try to rectify their mistake time and again. However, this aspect is replaced by machine learning perspective of self-driving cars, yet the feedback loop of machine is entirely different from human learning. For example, if any new road sign is installed, which is not programmed in software of self-driving cars, it can go unnoticed by the car during driving (Riener et al., 2016). The comparison of human and machine learning can be seen in figure 1, which shows that each time manufacturer needs to bring changes in self-driving cars software to enable learning of any incident. Any discrepancy in programming can thus create high risk for human lives, both pedestrians as well as passengers of self-driving cars (Holstein, Dodig-Crnkovic & Pelliccione, 2018).
