Raise your hand if you've never thought of "talking" to your car (how many have you ruined, "KITT" from the 80s TV series)? Sure, I'm talking about autonomous vehicles that communicate with pedestrians and other drivers, but not in the way you think.
Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous vehicle company, has developed a communications system that uses LED displays on the roofs of cars to send clear, unambiguous messages to pedestrians. Will it become a standard?
Tertiary communication, a new street language
Over time (and in a journey with ups and downs) human drivers have developed various non-verbal signals to communicate their intentions. Nods, waving, things like that. Waymo's autonomous vehicles have neither hands nor eyes: how will they "talk" to the outside world?
Waymo has introduced what it calls “tertiary communications”: a system that uses the LED displays on the roof of their Jaguar I-Pace cars to send two types of messages. One for pedestrians and one for other drivers.
Auto-traffic lights on the street?
Never, he says Orlee Smith, senior product manager at Waymo. “We don't want to be traffic cops, give orders to pedestrians or intimidate human drivers.” I hope so.
Certainly the "language" adopted will be much more polite. Waymo's autonomous vehicles will display gray and white rectangles that change position to tell pedestrians that the car is giving way. Please, go ahead, we will not run over you, fellow pedestrians. For drivers following, however, a yellow pedestrian symbol signals the presence of a pedestrian crossing.
But that's not all: Waymo is also experimenting with external audio alerts to communicate with emergency responders and to provide additional details about the car's maneuvers, such as an unexpected detour.
A universal language for autonomous vehicles, or poor pedestrians
Autonomous vehicles, gone as a robotaxi in some cities (in the USA, China and elsewhere) they will be increasingly widespread. If every company started using its own symbols and signals, we could find ourselves facing a real epistemological chaos. A Babel for pedestrians, in short. Waymo is pushing to standardize light patterns, sounds and symbols across the industry, but obviously, other companies, like Cruise e zoox.
The road towards effective and universal communication is still long. Don't make it easy: it's not enough to honk your horn.
