Autonomous Vehicle Controllers that Mimic Responsible Human Driving Behaviors: Review and Data Collection Recommendations

The future of driving is largely headed towards autonomous vehicles, and this is clear with companies such as Tesla, Waymo, and even tech giant Apple. Many professionals predict that autonomous vehicles will likely be commercially available and legal to use in some places by the late 2020s [15]. There are some benefits to the rapid development of autonomous vehicle controllers, such as more independence for those who can’t drive due to impairments, the potential for reduced traffic, as well as possibly decreasing the number of accidents. Though these are promising prospects, there are ethical concerns regarding the implementation of such technology. The goal of this thesis is to provide an introductory literature review that discusses the history of autonomous vehicles, different levels of autonomy, ethical considerations in autonomous systems, and prior work on characterizing human driving behaviors and implementing these behaviors with autonomous vehicle controllers. Finally, recommendations are proposed for data collection on human driving behaviors in an ongoing NSF-funded project at Arizona State University, “Embodiment of Human Values Profiles in Autonomous Vehicles via Psychomimetic Controller Design.”