About this Research Topic

Background

Intelligent Mobility (IM) constitutes a multitude of advanced applications for systems and services that aim to enhance people’s movement and experience when they travel. Recent developments of IM include the design and implementation of mobile, wearable or embedded devices and sensors to facilitate seamless mobility and ‘door-to-door’ services in travel that provide both prognostics and smart recommendations to their users. Furthermore, modern advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ambient Intelligence (AI) have opened up opportunities for new Passenger Experiences (PAX) in self-driving cars. Alongside the opportunities, the automation levels of such IM systems and services pose challenges of trust and safety, both of which, in turn, can affect PAX. IM’s criticality and importance in modern society has been recognized not only by local but also global authorities as its impact has the great potential of shaping and improving modern wellbeing by allowing more inclusivity and accessibility in travel.

Passenger Experience (PAX) constitutes a critical factor in defining decision-making processes when we travel. Modern technologies and services offer new interaction platforms among passengers, other stakeholders and those technologies introducing novel forms of what we call Intelligent Mobility (IM). From autonomous vehicles to mobility prognostics to facilitate door-to-door travel services, IM aims to capitalize on the opportunities these modern Artificial Intelligent (AI)-driven technologies provide. However, alongside opportunities, there are also challenges. For example, recent research suggests that the perception of risk when using self-driving cars is strong while in our recent Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2019 about ‘Trusted Autonomous Vehicles’ the public shared with us similar thoughts while highlighting issues of safety as well. On a similar note, discussions that took place at the House of Commons (British Parliament) last March emphasized the importance of prioritizing both PAX and green transport and multimodal solutions to enhance people’s wellbeing and decongest city centers while safeguarding stakeholders’ sustainability. There is a great need to unpack the relationship between safety, trust and PAX in IM in order to design novel interventions that take into account both service performance and PAX.

Questions explored within this Research Topic include the following:

- How is Safety perception shaped within the context of different automation levels in IM?
- Do we really need to Trust IM? What is Trust in different IM contexts?
- What are the sociotechnical factors affecting PAX in IM? What is the role of context?
- Can IM enhance or handicap PAX and perceptions of Safety and Trust?
- How can we design future novel yet safe and trustworthy IM ecosystems that are adaptable, reactive and proactive to user/passenger needs?
- What (new) methodologies we need to devise/deploy for user requirement capture and to user test and evaluate novel IM systems and services?

Potential authors for this Research Topic can submit either theoretical or applied research manuscripts of original work that address one or multiple questions (as highlighted above) and aim to demonstrate novel insights and findings

Keywords: Intelligent Mobility, Passenger Experience, Artificial Intelligence, Trust, Safeguarding, Smart Travel

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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