This book takes a look at fully automated, autonomous vehicles and discusses many open questions: How can autonomous vehicles be integrated into the current transportation system with diverse users and human drivers? Where do automated vehicles fall under current legal frameworks? What risks are associated with automation and how will society respond to these risks? How will the marketplace react to automated vehicles and what changes may be necessary for companies? Experts from Germany and the United States define key societal, engineering, and mobility issues related to the automation of vehicles. They discuss the decisions programmers of automated vehicles must make to enable vehicles to perceive their environment, interact with other road users, and choose actions that may have ethical consequences. The authors further identify expectations and concerns that will form the basis for individual and societal acceptance of autonomous driving. While the safety benefits of such vehicles are tremendous, the authors demonstrate that these benefits will only be achieved if vehicles have an appropriate safety concept at the heart of their design. Realizing the potential of automated vehicles to reorganize traffic and transform mobility of people and goods requires similar care in the design of vehicles and networks. By covering all of these topics, the book aims to provide a current, comprehensive, and scientifically sound treatment of the emerging field of “autonomous driving".

Autonomous vehicles have attracted a great deal of attention in the media, however there are some inconsistencies between the perception of autonomous vehicles’ capabilities and their actual functions. This book provides an accessible explanation of how autonomous vehicles function, suggesting appropriate regulatory responses to the existing and emerging technology.

"A runaway trolley is speeding down a track" So begins what is perhaps the most fecund thought experiment of the past several decades since its invention by Philippa Foot. Since then, moral philosophers have applied the "trolley problem" as a thought experiment to study many different ethical conflicts - and chief among them is the programming of autonomous vehicles. Nowadays, however, very few philosophers accept that the trolley problem is a perfect analogy for driverless cars or that the situations autonomous vehicles face will resemble the forced choice of the unlucky bystander in the original thought experiment. This book represents a substantial and purposeful effort to move the academic discussion beyond the trolley problem to the broader ethical, legal, and social implications that autonomous vehicles present. There are still urgent questions waiting to be addressed, for example: how AVs might interact with human drivers in mixed or "hybrid" traffic environments; how AVs might reshape our urban landscapes; what unique security or privacy concerns are raised by AVs as connected devices in the "Internet of Things"; how the benefits and burdens of this new technology, including mobility, traffic congestion, and pollution, will be distributed throughout society; and more. An attempt to map the landscape of these next-generation questions and to suggest preliminary answers, this volume draws on the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, economics, urban planning and transportation engineering, business ethics and more, and represents a global range of perspectives.

The automotive industry appears close to substantial change engendered by “self-driving” technologies. This technology offers the possibility of significant benefits to social welfare—saving lives; reducing crashes, congestion, fuel consumption, and pollution; increasing mobility for the disabled; and ultimately improving land use. This report is intended as a guide for state and federal policymakers on the many issues that this technology raises.

The robot population is rising on Earth and other planets. (Mars is inhabited entirely by robots.) As robots slip into more domains of human life--from the operating room to the bedroom--they take on our morally important tasks and decisions, as well as create new risks from psychological to physical. This makes it all the more urgent to study their ethical, legal, and policy impacts. To help the robotics industry and broader society, we need to not only press ahead on a wide range of issues, but also identify new ones emerging as quickly as the field is evolving. For instance, where military robots had received much attention in the past (and are still controversial today), this volume looks toward autonomous cars here as an important case study that cuts across diverse issues, from liability to psychology to trust and more. And because robotics feeds into and is fed by AI, the Internet of Things, and other cognate fields, robot ethics must also reach into those domains, too. Expanding these discussions also means listening to new voices; robot ethics is no longer the concern of a handful of scholars. Experts from different academic disciplines and geographical areas are now playing vital roles in shaping ethical, legal, and policy discussions worldwide. So, for a more complete study, the editors of this volume look beyond the usual suspects for the latest thinking. Many of the views as represented in this cutting-edge volume are provocative--but also what we need to push forward in unfamiliar territory.

This open access book introduces the reader to the foundations of AI and ethics. It discusses issues of trust, responsibility, liability, privacy and risk. It focuses on the interaction between people and the AI systems and Robotics they use. Designed to be accessible for a broad audience, reading this book does not require prerequisite technical, legal or philosophical expertise. Throughout, the authors use examples to illustrate the issues at hand and conclude the book with a discussion on the application areas of AI and Robotics, in particular autonomous vehicles, automatic weapon systems and biased algorithms. A list of questions and further readings is also included for students willing to explore the topic further.

This edited book comprises papers about the impacts, benefits and challenges of connected and automated cars. It is the third volume of the LNMOB series dealing with Road Vehicle Automation. The book comprises contributions from researchers, industry practitioners and policy makers, covering perspectives from the U.S., Europe and Japan. It is based on the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2015 which was jointly organized by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in July 2015. The topical spectrum includes, but is not limited to, public sector activities, human factors, ethical and business aspects, energy and technological perspectives, vehicle systems and transportation infrastructure. This book is an indispensable source of information for academic researchers, industrial engineers and policy makers interested in the topic of road vehicle automation.