Ethics in the Design of Automated Vehicles: The AVEthics project

Automated vehicle (AV) as a social agent in a dynamic traffic environment mixed with other road users, will encounter risk situations compelling it to make decisions in complex dilemmas. This paper presents the AVEthics (Ethics policy for Automated Vehicles) project. AVEthics aims to provide a framework for an ethics policy for the artificial intelligence of an AV in order to regulate its interactions with other road users. First, we will specify the kind of (artificial) ethics that can be applied to AV, including its moral principles, values and weighing rules with respect to human ethics and ontology. Second, we will implement this artificial ethics by means of a serious game in order to test interactions in dilemma situations. Third, we will evaluate the acceptability of the ethics principles proposed for an AV applied to simulated use cases. The outcomes of the project are expected to improve the operational safety design of an AV and render it acceptable for the end-user.