Wizard without the Curtain, Krysta Chauncey, Ph.D. -- DataBS 2025 Pre-show
[DataBS 2025 Pre-show are a selection of talks that couldn't fit into the main dataBS schedule and were invited to record their talks to share ahead of the main event. See https://databsconf.com/ for details.]
Self-driving technology will be a key component of the mobility portfolio of the future; however, it is still an open question what in-ride behaviors consumers will accept from autonomous vehicles (AVs). Understanding the impact of ride experience and AV behavior on passenger repeat usage is critical for defining engineering priorities–but how can we measure the effect of a car’s behavior before all the expensive work to create it?
To answer this question, we collected in-car data on passenger response to a range of robotaxi behaviors. This required creative solutions for a variety of problems: how to reliably simulate AV behavior without relying on on-road fault injection; how to minimize the impact of one behavior on data collected subsequently; how to reproduce the environment of a solo ride in a data collection context; and how to define the best proxy measure for future usage. Behind the scenes, researchers worked hard to get the best data possible on how AV behaviors change passenger usage.
Bio:
Krysta Chauncey, Ph.D. is the founder of Action Potential Acumen LLC, which replaces assumptions with information to launch products that succeed. In the past 15 years Krysta has created workflows for rail engineers reviewing near-miss incidents, optimized the comprehension of financial information for retail investors, interviewed Special Forces ski instructors, observed hand positions of patients using infusion pumps, and created product roadmaps for robots supporting people with dementia. Her work has guided the development of autonomous vehicles, military and medical equipment, in-store retail experiences, social robotics, and investment dashboards.
Website:
https://www.actionpotentialacumen.com/