Patrick Emami (@pemami4911), Alex Emery (@agemery), and Bryce Sperling (@bsperling)

Within our lifetimes, we will see self-driving cars gradually have a larger presence on our roads. However, many are skeptical about adopting this new technology. Most people do not like the idea of having to give up complete control over their vehicle, especially in dangerous situations. The purpose of this project is to create a realistic environment for people to simulate the experience of being in various driving situations inside a self-driving vehicle. The goal is to potentially convince skeptics that the capabilities of self-driving cars will make transportation safer and easier.

We have built an interactive, virtual-reality simulator that allows a user to experience both manually driving through different scenarios and to observe how a self-driving car would handle the same scenario. The features of self-driving cars that are displayed are collision prediction and avoidance, safe navigation in inclement weather, and adaptive cruise control. Our simulator could easily be used in studies to assess whether people become more inclined to use a self-driving car when shown some of the safety and convenience features that they will come with.

Each demo consists of segments of "manual mode" driving, where the user has a physical steering wheel and accelerator/brakes and is controlling the vehicle, and an "autonomous mode" where the vehicle drives itself.