US 10,372,130 B1 · Communicating reasons for vehicle actions

Abstract

Techniques for communicating feedback to passengers of autonomous vehicles regarding reasons for actions taken by autonomous vehicles to build trust with passengers are described herein. For instance, an autonomous vehicle may associate various objects with symbols and/or predicates while traversing a path to evaluate Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulae. Events along the path may require the autonomous vehicle to perform an action. The vehicle may determine to communicate the event and/or action to the passenger to provide a reason as to why the autonomous vehicle took the action, based on evaluation of the LTL formulae. In some examples, the autonomous vehicle may communicate with passengers via one or more of visual cues, auditory cues, and/or haptic cues. In this way, autonomous vehicles may build trust with passengers by reassuring and informing passengers of reasons for taking actions either before, during, or after the action is taken.

Claims21

Dependent claims

An autonomous vehicle comprising:

one or more processors;
one or more interior output devices disposed in an interior of the autonomous vehicle;
one or more sensors to provide data related to an environment of the autonomous vehicle;
and
one or more computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform acts comprising:
causing the autonomous vehicle to traverse a path to a destination location by controlling the motion of the autonomous vehicle according to multiple trajectories calculated for traversing the path;
receiving sensor data from the one or more sensors;
detecting, based at least in part on the sensor data, an event;
determining an action to be taken by the autonomous vehicle responsive to the event;
determining a semantic meaning of the event and the action to be taken responsive to the event;
outputting, by the one or more interior output devices, an indication of the event and the action;
and
causing the autonomous vehicle to perform the action.

10 more elements

A system comprising:

one or more processors;
one or more interior output devices disposed in an interior of an autonomous vehicle;
one or more sensors to provide data related to an environment of the autonomous vehicle;
and
one or more computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform acts comprising:
causing the autonomous vehicle to traverse a path by controlling the motion of the autonomous vehicle according to multiple trajectories calculated for traversing the path;
receiving sensor data from the one or more sensors;
detecting, based at least in part on the sensor data, an event;
determining an action to be taken by the autonomous vehicle responsive to the event;
outputting, by the one or more interior output devices, an indication of at least one of the event or the action, wherein outputting the indication comprises at least one of:
outputting, by a speaker of the one or more interior output devices, sound including a word or phrase describing the at least one of the event or the action;
outputting, by a display of the one or more interior output devices, text including the word or phrase describing the at least one of the event or the action;
or
outputting, by the display, a graphical representation of the at least one of the event or the action;
and
causing the autonomous vehicle to perform the action,
wherein detecting an event comprises evaluation of one or more linear temporal logic formulae.

14 more elements

A method comprising:

causing an autonomous vehicle to traverse a path by controlling the motion of the autonomous vehicle according to multiple trajectories calculated for traversing the path;
detecting, based on data obtained from one or more external sensors of the autonomous vehicle, an event based at least in part of evaluation of one or more linear temporal logic (LTL) formulae;
determining an action to be taken by the autonomous vehicle responsive to the event based at least in part of evaluation of one or more LTL formulae;
determining a semantic meaning of the event and the action to be taken responsive to the event;
outputting, by one or more interior output devices, an indication of one or more of the event or the action;
and
causing the autonomous vehicle to perform the action.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Communicating reasons for vehicle actions

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Communicating reasons for vehicle actions

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims21