Benedikt Groß

Who Wants to Be a Self-Driving Car?

2017 Sep

“Who Wants to be a Self-driving Car?” is a data driven trust exercise that uses augmented reality to help people empathise with self-driving vehicle systems. We built an unconventional driving machine that lets people use real-time, three dimensional mapping and object recognition displayed in a virtual reality headset to navigate through space.

The project aims to be a prototype for empathy, creating situations in which the driver and nearby bystanders become part of a conversation about responsibility, fascination and perhaps, hope for a world that is moving towards autonomous mobility.

A controller is used to steer, accelerate, and stop the machine as well as change the view mode of the VR headset. The VR experience is created using data collected by the sensors outfitted on the driving machine. The main view is a presentation of data from a 3D depth camera that uses stereoscopic imaging with image recognition to map and augment the landscape in real time.

“Who wants to be a self-driving car?” is a tool to explore the technology behind self-driving cars from a human perspective. The project is intended to be used as an accessible platform for all people to share their perceptions, feelings, and thoughts on the many ways that sensors, data, computation and mobility are intertwined.