Transition to the Socially Inspired Car

The past few years were dominated by the broad emergence of wireless communication (IEEE 802.11p/WAVE) which led to Internet connectivity at reasonable cost even in the automotive domain. Nowadays almost each new car is connected to the Internet - the transition from formerly independently acting drivers and cars to connectedness with 'the rest of the planet' has taken place. These days more than 1 billion of cars are running worldwide (2009: 965 millions), which is more than the number of active users of Facebook (March 2012: 901 millions). This offers huge potential for social services in cars, but it might also be the source for additional distraction. What we discover in vehicular interfaces today is a still increasing number of sensors and actuators, more and larger displays, and -enabled by Internet availability and content stored in the cloud- feature-rich applications (Apps) that have found their way into the car; the driver is more and more unable to cope with all this information - why not should the 'car' relieve the 'driver' and take over some tasks such as optimum way finding (to avoid jams), driving safety (delivery of warnings), etc.?

We are interested in a "social service beyond Facebook & Co." that creates value for the information provider. Up to now, Facebook users provide status information, social status (feelings), and much more (photos, etc.) to all the users in their network; but they do not get benefit out of it - what is the worth of yet another "friend" in the network (which you have never met or talked to before) or another "I like it!" to a written comment? Further on, we are not only interested in social interaction between drivers (e.g., using Facebook on the Smartphone/in-car display while driving [1], but rather focusing on the automotive domain as one field with huge potential on enabling social interactions. As like for humans, it would be relatively easy for a car to provide status information all the time (location, speed, driving destination) using all the on-board information systems, navigation device, GPS information, etc. For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the U.S. is launching a real-world test involving nearly 3,000 cars, trucks, and buses using volunteer drivers in Ann Arbor, Michigan this summer [2]. The vehicles will be equipped to continuously communicate over wireless networks, exchanging information on location, direction and speed 10 times a second with other similarly equipped cars within about 1,000 feet. A computer analyzes the information and issues danger warnings to drivers, often before they can see the other vehicle. Furthermore, it would be possible for the car to exchange sort of social information (e.g., feelings and emotions) by taking information from diagnostics systems such as engine control unit (ECU) or powertrain control module (PCM) into account (error codes, condition of engine, clutch, etc). (Last but not least could also the mental/social state of the driver be determined and used for car status adaptations).

Topics of Interest

Potential topics to be discussed at the workshop include, but are not limited to:

  • Social norm in the automotive domain
  • Relevant parameters to identify/describe social status or behavior of a car (incorporate the driver?)
  • Modeling techniques for handling social interaction behavior, e.g., traffic superorganism, pheromones, stigmergic behavior [3]
  • Benefit assessment: why should cars (maybe drivers) disclose their 'social status', 'social relationships'?
  • Understanding the potentials of socially inspired car-car communication
  • Crowdsourcing
  • Driving as a "collaboration" with either passengers or an agent [4]
  • Implementation of agents/robots for improving V2V communications [5]
  • The subject of V2V communications (driver to driver?, passenger to passenger?, driver to passenger?, driver to agent?, or agent to agent?)
  • Authentication for in-vehicle social services
  • Privacy, safety, or security issues related to in-vehicle social services
  • Plausible types of information in in-vehicle social services
  • Cultural differences in in-vehicle social services [1]
  • V2V communications as a personal broadcasting station (or system)
  • Other than V2V, including V2I (vehicle to infrastructure using roadside units) or V2B (vehicle to broadband cloud (network)) [6]
  • Optimal protocols for social cars (WiFi/802.11p, Bluetooth, Wimax, NFC, etc.)?