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ROBOPOL: Social Robotics Meets Vehicular Communications for Cooperative Automated Driving

Manuel Bied, John Arockiasamy, Andy Comeca, Maximilian Schrapel, Victoria Yang, Alexey Rolich, Barbara Bruno, Maike Schwammberger, Dieter Fiems, Alexey Vinel

TL;DR

This work addresses the challenge of coordinating mixed traffic with autonomous and human actors by placing a social robot at intersections as a traffic mediator. It defines four enabling capabilities—advanced perception, V2X-based communication, social human-robot interaction, and formal traffic reasoning—and provides a unified architecture with a PoC that integrates the first three. The PoC uses a PAL Robotics ARI robot and a V2X-enabled e-bike to demonstrate pedestrian crossing assistance and real-time inter-actor coordination. Findings from virtual and physical testing indicate feasibility and safety benefits, while outlining future directions in formal methods, perception refinement, and gesture design to enhance reliability and user trust.

Abstract

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.

ROBOPOL: Social Robotics Meets Vehicular Communications for Cooperative Automated Driving

TL;DR

This work addresses the challenge of coordinating mixed traffic with autonomous and human actors by placing a social robot at intersections as a traffic mediator. It defines four enabling capabilities—advanced perception, V2X-based communication, social human-robot interaction, and formal traffic reasoning—and provides a unified architecture with a PoC that integrates the first three. The PoC uses a PAL Robotics ARI robot and a V2X-enabled e-bike to demonstrate pedestrian crossing assistance and real-time inter-actor coordination. Findings from virtual and physical testing indicate feasibility and safety benefits, while outlining future directions in formal methods, perception refinement, and gesture design to enhance reliability and user trust.

Abstract

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.
Paper Structure (14 sections, 7 equations, 9 figures)

This paper contains 14 sections, 7 equations, 9 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Technical Enablers
  4. Perception
  5. Planning
  6. Interaction
  7. General Finite State Machine
  8. Proof-of-concept
  9. Hardware Description
  10. System Architecture
  11. Use case
  12. Insights from virtual environment
  13. Insights from proof-of-concept demonstrator
  14. Conclusion & Outlook

Figures (9)

  • Figure 1: Cooperative social robot communicating with both VRUs and AVs to coordinate the traffic using natural- (orange boxes with round edges) as well as digital communication (yellow boxes with sharp edges).
  • Figure 2: Exemplary spatial traffic logic, where car $E$ plans to turn left at an intersection.
  • Figure 3: Generalized FSM that can be applied to any use case and be centric to any traffic actor with V2X capability.
  • Figure 4: The front and rear views of the ARI equipped with a V2X unit mounted on the rear, integrated with onboard hardware, and a front-facing RGB-D camera.
  • Figure 5: The HNF Nicolai UD4 All-Terrain e-bike equipped with a V2X communication unit and a display interface for potential hazard warnings
  • ...and 4 more figures