Artificial Co-Drivers as a Universal Enabling Technology for Future Intelligent Vehicles and Transportation Systems

This position paper introduces the concept of artificial “co-drivers” as an enabling technology for future intelligent transportation systems. In Sections I and II, the design principles of co-drivers are introduced and framed within general human-robot interactions. Several contributing theories and technologies are reviewed, specifically those relating to relevant cognitive architectures, human-like sensory-motor strategies, and the emulation theory of cognition. In Sections III and IV, we present the co-driver developed for the EU project interactIVe as an example instantiation of this notion, demonstrating how it conforms to the given guidelines. We also present substantive experimental results and clarify the limitations and performance of the current implementation. In Sections IV and V, we analyze the impact of the co-driver technology. In particular, we identify a range of application fields, showing how it constitutes a universal enabling technology for both smart vehicles and cooperative systems, and naturally sets out a program for future research.