Ethical Issues in Hybrid and Autonomous Vehicles
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CpE 481 Assignment – Due: February 26
Ethical Issues in Hybrid and Autonomous Vehicles
For this assignment, you will select a topic associated with hyrbrid autonomous vehicles and ethics and
write a brief (3-4 page) report.
Some possible topics might include:
• Design of Driving Algorithm for Emergency Situations. As drivers, all of us hope a situation like
this never arises. What if a pedestrian walks directly in front of our vehicle? Hitting a
pedestrian likely has severe consequences but alternatives might put ourselves and passengers
at risk of great bodily injury. Such choices are weighty when they fall on individual humans, but
what are the ethical dilemmas at arise when we are designing an algorithm that controls the
vehicle and makes choices for such situations? What are our responsibilities as an engineer?
• Tradeoff of energy efficiency versus safety. A hybrid vehicle offers many possibilities for
improving fuel consumption efficiency which benefits both the individual user and society in
general. However, some of methods for fuel efficiency may involve safety considerations. For
example, allowing a vehicle that is slowing to a stop to come closer to the lead vehicle in front
may allow for more gradual deceleration and greater fuel efficiency, but also may allow smaller
safety margin. How should such tradeoffs be resolved?
• Privacy of individual movement data. V2X communications will inherently collect a great deal
of user-specific information on an individual’s movements. What information should be used
and for what purposes? It seems reasonable to use metadata to devise more efficient traffic
routing which speeds overall throughput? But what if you have the choice between optimizing
overall traffic throughput vs. an individuals time to their destination? Should information be
used to steer an individual on a route where past history indicates they have favored
restaurants and stores? Should user preferences be shared with third party marketers?
• Optimal design of autonomous systems for safety versus efficiency tradeoffs. Is safety the
overriding concern in design of autonomous vehicle safety or do other factors like economy and
fuel efficiency play a role also? Adding more sensors might make a vehicle system safer but
also might push the vehicle price past what is affordable by most potential users. Allowing
shorter spacing between vehicles may improve fuel efficiency in some instances, but might also
slightly elevate safety risks? What tradeoffs are ethical and in keeping with our responsabilities
as engineers?
These are just a few of the possible topics. You may pick one of these, or another one of your choosing.
Dr. Woerner is available to help advise you on your choice of topic. Full credit will be given for papers
that relate the problem to the EcoCAR project.
Your paper should:
• Clearly state the ethical problem or dilemma consider.
• Cite the relevant sections of one or more professional Codes of Ethics (e.g., IEEE, ACM, SAE,
NSPE) and apply the guidance from these codes to the problem considered.
• Cite one or more outside references (books, journal, magazine or conference papers) which
consider the problem and discuss the information learned.
• Present a clear analysis of the tradeoffs involved in the ethical problem, considering all points of
view.
• Propose a solution to the problem presented, and justify your solution with support from ethical
codes, your research and reasoning.
The paper should be written in complete sentences using proper grammar. References should be clearly
cited, and directly quoted material should be clearly identified by quotes or indentation.
We will provide the Turnitin tool on eCampus for this assignment. The Turnitin settings allow you to run
an analysis of your own paper, and if necessary, resubmit the paper after corrections. For more information on Ethical Issues in Hybrid and Autonomous Vehicles read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car