Researchers have designed multiplayer games that occupants of autonomous vehicles can play with other players in nearby self-driving cars.
A
new
study,
led
by
researchers
from
the
Cheriton
School
of
Computer
Science
in
collaboration
with
Waterloo’s
Games
Institute,
details
three
games
created
for
level
three
and
higher
semi-autonomous
vehicles.
The
researchers
also
made
suggestions
for
many
exciting
types
of
in-car
games
for
future
exploration.
Level three and higher semi-autonomous vehicles are those that have, at minimum, environmental-detection capabilities and can make informed decisions for themselves.
“As autonomous vehicles start to replace conventional vehicles, occupants will have much more free time than they used to,” said Matthew Lakier, a PhD student at Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. “You could use time spent in commute to read a book, watch a movie, get ahead on work, or browse the internet. Still, not everything you do has to be all isolated.
“You will be able to play games with other people in autonomous vehicles nearby when the car is driving itself. The games will be imposed on top of the actual world, so drivers won’t have to take their eyes off the road.”
L to R: Study authors Professor Daniel Vogel and PhD candidate Matthew Lakier. Professors Lennart Nacke and Takeo Igarashi were unavailable for the photo.
Self-driving cars have many intelligent technologies that help to keep them safe, and the researchers envision that in the future vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and heads-up displays (HUDs) will also become standard features. V2V enables cars to let each other know where they are relative to each other on the road, and HUDs on the windshield keep drivers aware of the car’s speed and road conditions.
In developing the three games, the researchers first undertook an extensive literature review to identify gaps in previous research done about autonomous vehicles and found that not much attention has been given to cross-car games.
They then developed a virtual reality (VR) driving simulator to render the car cabin, outside environment, and roadway with artificially controlled cars and intelligent computer-controlled players. The VR driving simulator is designed as a framework to enable rapid prototyping of in-car games that leverage future technologies like V2V, full window HUDs, head tracking, and different input methods.
Twelve participants evaluated the three cross-car games. They played the games, with occasional take-over tasks, completed the Player Experience Inventory questionnaire to measure player experience, and answered questions in a semi-structured interview.
“Overall, the participants rated the games highly in immersion, there was a positive response to the incorporation of HUDs in the games, and the different game styles did not significantly impact the take-over task completion time. All games were popular for different reasons,” said Matthew Lakier, a member of Waterloo’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
“People were happy to play with strangers. So, for example, they said they could form impromptu relationships with other people on the road.”
The study, Cross-Car, Multiplayer Games for Semi-Autonomous Driving, was presented at CHI PLAY 2019, the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, which was held in Barcelona, Spain, from October 22–25 2019. It was conducted by Matthew Lakier, his supervisor Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Daniel Vogel, Associate Professor Lennart Nacke from the Games Institute, and Takeo Igarashi, a professor from the University of Tokyo.