Human machine interaction
This project is an ongoing work about visually impaired people and autonomous vehicles' interaction. Researchers want to know how can visually impaired people need when they use autonomous vehicles in the future.
Problem statement
Alhough there are several methods for visually impaired people to get help from the society, they still facing increasing difficulities when taking mobility tools like public transportation, Uber/Lyft or taxises. Orientation & Mobility (O&M) has been developed for 2 decades, and many people have been trained to help visually impaired and blind people’s mobility, however, blind and visually impaired people’s mental health and their dependent mobility have become a series problem. Some people felt hard to be accepted by the society since human drivers don’t care about their difficulties and their needs of more accurate stop information, which is a big challenge of human-cented design.
Autonomous vehicles, as a new mobility technology, not only can release human drivers' pressure and improve safety rate for normal people, but also change people’s behavioral system. When people use autonomous vehicles, it means people will only interact with machine, and no other people will help before and after you take the vehicles. Such “non-human” mode can bring blind and visually impaired people with “no critique” environment, and also can help their “independent mobility”. However, though tons of research have stated the benefits of autonomous vehicles for blind people, we still don’t know how to specifically help them.
Research method
We used telephone interview and survey to ask people’s preferences and attitudes of autonomous vehicles
Design process
I designed the survey with my advisor, and interviewed the participants. After the first round of interview, we adjusted the survey, and changed many questions to get more accurate answers.
Result
Since it is an ongoing project, and I am still working on it. The result will be shared once it is published.