An Accessible Autonomous Vehicle Ridesharing Ecosystem

Autonomous ridesharing vehicles provide a potential alternative and affordable mode of transportation for older adults and users with disabilities or special needs, but relatively few studies have investigated the accessibility of autonomous ridesharing applications and vehicles for them. Therefore, a participatory design approach was used to investigate the needs and challenges of this population. This investigation involved interviews, review of past focus group transcripts, literature reviews, and surveys. The findings resulted in a list of user needs to design and build prototypes of accessible technologies as part of an ecosystem for booking and riding in autonomous ridesharing vehicles. The ecosystem of technologies consisted of prototypes of a mobile application, a web application, an in-vehicle human-machine interface, an external human-machine interface, and the vehicle interior design.