ROBOPOL: Social Robotics Meets Vehicular Communications for Cooperative Automated Driving

On the way towards full autonomy, sharing roads between automated vehicles and human actors in so-called mixed traffic is unavoidable. Moreover, even if all vehicles on the road were autonomous, pedestrians would still be crossing the streets. We propose social robots as moderators between autonomous vehicles and vulnerable road users (VRU). To this end, we identify four enablers requiring integration: (1) advanced perception, allowing the robot to see the environment; (2) vehicular communications allowing connected vehicles to share intentions and the robot to send guiding commands; (3) social human-robot interaction allowing the robot to effectively communicate with VRUs and drivers; (4) formal specification allowing the robot to understand traffic and plan accordingly. This paper presents an overview of the key enablers and report on a first proof-of-concept integration of the first three enablers envisioning a social robot advising pedestrians in scenarios with a cooperative automated e-bike.