Shake and brake: your autonomous car wants your attention

There’s a grey period that autonomous car developers don’t often discuss between humans controlling cars and AI controlling cars, where humans in autonomous cars will need to stay on high alert to avoid accidents with terrible human drivers.

Some suggestions have been put forward on how to tackle this intersection, like using visual or aural alerts. The Tesla Model S, which provides a highway self-driving system, alerts the driver through a series of beeps, warning them to take control of the car.

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However, according to the Technische Universität München in Munich, Germany, all of the current alerts systems are ineffective. A team of researchers said to Spectrum IEEE that vibrotactile display alerts are by far the best way to get the driver’s attention, because they are hard to ignore.

Another advantage of vibrotactile alerts is the ability to tell the driver where the danger is coming from. If an accident is about to happen on the left, the car will send vibrations to that side.

Your Tesla will shake you all night long – because you’re sleepy

The team said that vibrotactile alerts should be used in conjunction with the current spew of blinkers that flash when the autonomous car spots an issue or doesn’t know what to do.

While alerts are fine for issues like not having enough gas (or electricity) or an upcoming traffic jam, we hope that in the future autonomous car providers will develop systems to better protect a sleepy or inattentive driver, instead of banking on driver’s making the perfect call in a life-or-death situation.

This should be the top priority for autonomous car providers, considering the main concern raised by most drivers is how the artificial intelligence will respond to an oncoming accident. If manufacturers can build a car that is able to withstand more damage or can better protect the driver, we may see much higher adoption rates in a shorter space of time.