Categories
Autonomous Vehicles, New Mobility & the Built Environment

Artists, Accessibility and Autonomous Vehicles – Part 2 #AVS18


A long-time proponent of autonomous taxis, Princeton Professor Dr Alain Kornhauser discusses a potential downside for this future mobility as a service offering. Speaking at the AVS18 Symposium, Kornhauser warns that operators will need to account for how people treat property they don’t own. In the above video, he provides many examples of graffiti-covered public transportation systems. The flip-side of graffiti is art and he suggests that shared autonomous vehicles have the potential to be a sort of mobile canvas that could be a community asset, beyond better mobility.

To get to a world of mobile art, instead of rolling graffiti, Kornhauser suggests that respect will be key. His advice to operators is that they gain respect by first focusing on and bringing their product to the mobility disadvantaged. This may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, as the typical early adopters of technology products are those people who have enough discretionary funds to pay the higher prices associated with the latest gizmo.

This implies a target market that isn’t necessarily the richest in terms of dollars but has the greatest need. It is more than money, however, as it also implies design that addresses things like safety, the physical abilities of the riders, and the ability to communicate in ways that individuals need. The above video features footage from #AccessibleOlli at CES2018, providing an example of how that open-source approach is addressing the needs of people of all abilities (stay tuned for interviews with people working on #AccessibleOlli).

Kornhauser admits that getting everything right the first time will be a challenge, but since this form of mobility is largely software-driven and updated via broadband networks, incremental improvements are much easier to implement than in the non-connected world of yesteryear. Additionally, electrification and the accompanying skateboard chassis approach will allow designers to create vehicles that are both right-sized and adaptable for various applications (see video for examples, including #AccessibleOlli and Navya’s Robo Taxi).

Author Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

By Ken Pyle, Managing Editor

Ken Pyle is Marketing Director for the Broadband Forum. The mission of this 25+-year-old non-profit “is to unlock the potential for new markets and profitable revenue growth by leveraging new technologies and standards in the home, intelligent small business, and multi-user infrastructure of the broadband network.”

He is also co-founder of Viodi, LLC and Managing Editor of the Viodi View, a publication focused on the rural broadband ecosystem, autonomous vehicles, and electric aviation. He has edited and produced numerous multimedia projects for NTCA, US Telecom and Viodi. Pyle is the producer of Viodi’s Local Content Workshop, the Video Production Crash Course at NAB, as well as ViodiTV. He has been intimately involved in Viodi’s consulting projects and has created processes for clients to use for their PPV and VOD operations, as well authored reports on the independent telco market.

Linked In Profile

One reply on “Artists, Accessibility and Autonomous Vehicles – Part 2 #AVS18”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.