A 14-week group project where we redefined the autonomous car experience for a family road trip in 2025. It was accomplished with a team of four with a transportation designer, industrial designer, and AI specialist.
2016 Summer
2020 Revised
Cinema 4D / Photoshop / Illustrator / After Effects / Sketch
UX/UI Designer
Information Architect
Art Director
Motion Design
Ming Tai, Elise Co, Calvin Ku, Will Thomas (Sound Designer), Sissel Tolaas (Contemporary Installation Artist), Dan Goods (JPL)
We designed, prototyped, and tested the vehicle interior and interactions to create not just the future of self-driving cars, but an intelligent companion that cares for its passengers. We see the next family car as a CarTaker.
Conceptualize the next generation of family autonomous driving experience.
What do families need and want from an enclosed space for long road trips?
What do individuals need and want to satisfy mental and physical needs?
The conceptual vision of an autonomous vehicle experience for a family of four members.
The center console of Cai is a series of modular rounded hexagons that can fulfill different functions. It is meant to take its place among the passengers to encourage interaction as a companion and not just the interface for a tool to drive.
The first mode of transportation - Past
We went to Goldspirit Farm to understand how riders and horses communicate with each other. This helped us think about fluent, potential interaction opportunities between an autonomous car, and the user.
The fun of driving - Current
Our team sought out to understand the culture of driving, and how the view and road situation affects people's behaviors and emotions. Driving isn't only just about getting from point A to B.
Experience Autonomous driving assistant - future trend
By observing the driver using the Tesla Model S (2016) driverless mode, it's easy to tell that currently, it is still hard for people to fully trust a self-driving vehicle. Therefore, the interaction between driver and ADAS is more than just the act of driving. An emotional connection and trust with the system becomes more important than ever.
Human interaction with public transportation
We boarded the Los Angeles Metro Light Rail system to observe people's behavior when they're not focused on driving and learned that passengers have to deal with:
1. Complex information on route maps
2. Awkward eye contact and weird attention from strangers
3. Unpleasant smells
Amusement Park Attraction Rides
We ventured to Universal Studios to experience different haptic and kinetic sensations in relation to a sequence of stories and the feelings this experience evokes.
Autonomous Driving Assistance System
Manual control. The human performs all driving tasks.
This describes your everyday car.
No bells and whistles.
This is the adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist to help with driving fatigue.
2018 Toyota Corolla
(Toyota Safety Sense1)
2018 Nissan Sentra
(Intelligent Cruise Control)
Although the driver must have hands on the wheel and be ready to take control at any given moment, level 2 automation can assist in controlling speed and steering.
Tesla Autopilot
Audi Traffic Jam Assist
Be capable of driving themselves, but only under ideal conditions and with limitations, such as limited-access divided highways at a certain speed.
2019 Audi A8
L4 can drive themselves without human interactions (besides entering your destination) but will be restricted to known use cases.
Waymo
Level 5 capable vehicles should be able to monitor and maneuver through all road conditions and require no human interventions whatsoever, eliminating the need for a steering wheel and pedals.
Autonomous Artificially intelligent Automobile
Cai is aiming to become the bridge between active engagement as an autonomous driving vehicle and emotional engagement as a caregiver.
Nearly 100 Million Americans Embarked on Family Vacations in 2019.
Seeing and experiencing more together
Spending quality family time with one another
During 3 day weekend trips on Memorial Day or Labor Day, Americans will travel and on average have to deal with...
bouts of hunger
“are we there yet”
“how much longer”
“I’m tired.”
Your mobile device is the key to Cai. It syncs passengers' physical and mental data. Please it on top of a CAI table to start the journey.
Car Artificial Intelligence (Cai) syncs data from users' personal devices and makes decisions as the center console.
Cai’s physical component and interface function as a center console and as another family member. The family has to surrender their devices to Cai, encouraging family interaction.
Cai's hexagon based shapes create a modular system that allows its panels to build the multi-propose tables by attaching them.
Meanwhile, it picks up scents and sounds from around the environment and recreates them in the car next time for triggering a memory.
Cai, as a caretaker, addresses each family member's individual needs while enhancing family interaction as a whole.
Autonomous Car for Family Travel
+ Artificial Intelligence in CarTaker
The conceptual vision of an autonomous vehicle experience for a family of four members.
The center console of Cai is a series of modular rounded hexagons that can fulfill different functions. It is meant to take its place among the passengers to encourage interaction as a companion and not just the interface for a tool to drive.
The users could access and control the percentage of involvement they want Cai to have in their experience.
Cai is an artificial intelligence embedded in the autonomous car. Cai utilizes physiological and mental report data to read individual wellbeing profiles.
Cai is physically designed around the shape of rounded hexagon and takes spaces in the center of the car so as to denote a space as the new member. Hexagon shape also creates a modular system that achieve different user goals, such as dinning together, individual working needs, and regular mode.
After synthesizing the family's needs and behaviors, we created three modes: Regular Mode, Family Dinning Mode, Individual Mode. By moving and installing Cai's panels, this modular, hexagonal surface can form a large family table, or be used as a smaller, individual platform.
Colors that indicates action
Colors that reflect mood for adaptive computing
We used acrylic and foam to build an actual space for prototyping Cai.
To test our interior mockup, we invited a real family to come under the premise of taking a long family road trip.
By creating the actual space, we are able to observe people's behaviors and exceptions in the area.
We used 2 projectors to simulate the realistic road view with UI prototyping.
We invited a family to come to our project to experience the interior mockup that we built.
Seating has the mute mode to help passengers enjoy quiet situations when they need it.
Three main consolers information architecture: Side window, front window, and main consoler.
1. Develop metrics for measuring success
Develop metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of Cai in facilitating trust. We need to think about how to measure trust between humans and AI. We need to think about how to measure trust between humans and AI to help us improve the product and facilitate greater trust.
2. Build a clay model or AR mockups for further testing.
We need to increase the fidelity of our prototypes in order to test and improve designs and concepts. Next, we'd like to create and evaluate high-fidelity, physical models or an AR prototype.
3. Create Cai's urban eco-system
Conceptualize a Cai to Cai city-scale ecosystem where a connected system facilitates communication between Cais to share public social information, and ensure safe coordination on the road.
4. Explore Roadmap for the autonomous driving experience
Explore the roadmap for future autonomous driving-related products, such as charging stations, IOT system with home and workplaces, public transportation involved system