Walking@Tea-time 11 Oct 2021: Walking with robots

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Our subject in this episode is walking with robots and we ask a) how we might want to share our footways with automated devices, if at all, and b) what this might mean for our pedestrian environments?

We are assisted by two speakers who are working in the field:
Bern Grush describes a draft ISO standard that proposes to address mobile robot behaviour on the pavement, roadway and bike lanes. He has pedestrians in mind…

Alanna Coombes’ talk is on the rights to use of the pavement – differing interpretation of rights, who or what has such rights, how they are exercised and how are they enforced.

Bern, Chief Innovation Officer for Harmonize Mobility, is a Canadian transportation innovator trained in Human Factors Psychology and Systems Design Engineering from the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo, respectively. He brings a unique urban sensitivity to vehicle automation from both a human-social perspective and a complex-systems perspective. Bern is co-author of the 2018 textbook “The End of Driving: Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles.” He is the inventor of the Rideal platform for transit-user micro-incentives being piloted in the EU, and project leader for ISO DTS 4448: “Ground-based automated mobility“ for robotic ground-traffic operations.

Alanna is a PhD candidate at Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, with research interests in travel behaviour and the impacts of autonomous vehicles on city centres. Before leaving for the US Alanna led the smart city programme for the City of London from the Department of the Built Environment. In previous roles she has been a political adviser, senior policy manager, town centre strategy and marketing manager, and a regeneration director.