Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

In the past few years, great strides have been made in transforming transportation systems from a physical to a highly intelligent cyberphysical systems. A combination of intelligent software and hardware has brought high levels of connectivity and automation to transportation systems. These developments have the potential to address key existing issues e.g. congestion, safety, on-demand service, and first/last mile problems, as well as introducing new mobility services that will transform our mobility experience and patterns. We already see various examples, including a) the robotaxi service offered by Waymo in Arizona and California b) on-demand bus ride-hailing service provided by Pantonium in Belleville or c) dynamic, user-oriented routing offered by Waze. The focus so far has been on the technologies and services development and immediate physical safety aspects. However, essential issues like human-technology interactions, acceptance level, sustainability, cybersecurity, and privacy preservation remain open. This has resulted in various recent missteps e.g. in July 2019, in Vienna an autonomous shuttle driving at 12km/h struck a pedestrian. As a result, the full trial was suspended. Despite the high quality of living promised by Sidewalk labs Quayside project in Toronto, there is a significant level of negative sentiment about their connected and automated neighbourhood. To address these challenges, there is a strong need to make smart mobility technologies and services socially intelligent and trustable i.e. equip them with the understanding of how to react to different social situations when interacting with humans and effectively modify their interactions based on the context and individual behaviour. The aim of this program is to develop deep social intelligence in smart mobility technologies e.g. automated vehicle (AV), delivery robots, and drones as well as services e.g. shared on-demand mobility, where the connectivity and automation are at core. In this context four dimensions will be explored: (1) detailed experiments using realistic virtual immersive reality environment for capturing human behaviour (2) enhancing social intelligence in automation using the observed behaviour (3) evaluating social intelligence in smart mobility technologies and (4) privacy and cybersecurity by design in smart mobility technologies and services. This research program will train 2 PhD, 3 MASc, and 5 undergraduate students, who will be able to join the industry and academia with cutting edge skill sets. Strong emphasis will be given to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion. The program will help Canada better prepare for the connectivity and automation, become a leader in the adoption of smart mobility, and create high tech economic activity.