Communicating with connected autonomous vehicles, an experimental design symposium

This symposium is held online over two days as an interactive sessions managed by the School of Architecture facilitated by Colin Polwarth as part of his PhD method. 

Symposium aim

The environment of any future autonomous vehicle (AV) anticipates humans living and interacting with AVs, and raises questions concerning the rights to the city, communications, the effects on the city and the environment. The research is focussed on questions about Connected Autonomous Renewable Energy Vehicles (CAREV) and possible deeper changes in the city fabric, semiotics and communications, and whether a systemic ‘semiotic technoecology’ arises? 

Developments in CAREV’s specifically, machine intelligence, will need to understand, appreciate and respond to diverse cultural phenomena, and thus CAREV’s will need to have a semiotic capacity. CAREV’s will need to fully understand and anticipate the behaviour of other spatial agents in the public realm, just as people in the streetscape will need to be able to communicate with and understand the intentions of CAREVs. A deeper appreciation of the environmental and semiotic effects of CAREV is one of the research aims of this symposium. The method to achieve these aims is through transdisciplinary discussion. This is a cross college symposium held over two short sessions facilitated by Colin Polwarth and other RCA PhD researchers. In late March 2022, the RCA Intelligent Mobility Design Centre (IMDC) are holding a day-long conference Mobility Metamorphosis; this conference day invites other intelligent mobility researchers at the RCA to present their related research in an informal setting; these symposia are related to each other.

The recorded sessions will collect qualitative data from participants regarding research questions, architectural multimedia and design experiments related to living with autonomous vehicles. To assist in this online and participatory research we have created a website interface https://transfigcav.com/symposium-3. RCA researchers from across the college will participate in the symposium, encouraging a diversity of thought and voices into the process.

Colin Polwarth will discuss his experimental research, animations and prototypes. Panellists include researchers from RCA IMDC who will discuss the latest intelligent mobility research and how this relates to CAREV communications, specifically discussing the complex area of machine and human communication intelligences. Kam Rehal a RCA PhD researcher in communications focussed on semiotics. Susan Young also a RCA PhD researcher in animation will join the discussion.

Participants will discuss whether a future CAREV city will be safer, more liveable with more people and requiring higher standards of equality in transport and movement. Specific environmental questions will be asked of our panellists including circular economies, extraction, consumption and population development and how this related to the environmental, social and economic aspects of a future technology such as CAREV. Participants will be able to discuss how this visual tool facilitates CAREV communicating with a diversity of agents in the public realm, its relevance and what other means of communication between CAREV and agents could be envisaged. The symposium objective is to obtain novel data for the research. Join us for discussion about experimental design processes.