Hianic

An autonomous vehicle is not a “simple” robot, such as a robot companion, but a robot that transports people. That implies that the people inside must feel integrated in the environment, as they would be in a driven car. They expect, as well as people in the surroundings, the cybercar to behave accordingly adhering to social and urban conventions and negotiating its path among crowded environments. This is a new challenging topic that must and will be tackled in the HIANIC project. This project is part of the “Axe : Véhicules propres, sûrs, connectés, automatisés ” of the “défi 6 – mobilité et systèmes urbains durables. The HIANIC cybercar will analyze its environment by detecting people, evaluating crowd flows, recognizing typical scenarios. It will infer the reaction of the passengers in order to navigate in a way that makes them feel comfortable. Several navigation strategies will collaborate to adapt the movement of the cybercar to the typical scenarios. For example, in a crowded environment, the cybercar will move using reactive navigation but in less cluttered environments, human-aware navigation will be used. Finally, the vehicle will communicate its intention to the passengers and pedestrians and pay attention to its environment (passengers and pedestrians), increasing its knowledge of the situation for handling emergency situations. Such a system will contribute both to urban safety and intelligent mobility in “shared spaces”. Negotiation will help to avoid frozen situations increasing the vehicle’s reactivity and optimizing the navigable space. Negotiation, Human-Aware Navigation and Communication will contribute to a better public acceptance of such autonomous systems and facilitate their penetration in the transportation landscape.