Sustainable Interdependent Networks from Smart Autonomous Vehicle to Intelligent Transportation Networks

The next step to the evolution of human transportation is the replacement of human driver by the artificial-intelligence-capable machine (i.e., autonomous vehicle). The prospect of improving aspects of lives including better utilization of cost, increased mobility, and independence as well as futuristic urban planning are some of the foreseen benefits. Regardless, the challenges remain especially to convince the consumers to trust the machines in exchange for their safety and ultimately their lives. This chapter seeks to highlight the ethical implications of the autonomous technology as a prerequisite to establishing trust between man and machine. Recent studies on the technology are cited in this chapter in order to give an overall outlook of the current discussion on the topic including on the issue of ethics. The objectives of the ethical consideration have to be grounded to the main objective of benefitting the society as a whole. As such, individual rights to access of information, system configuration, and education regarding autonomous technology should be upheld. In the end, it is important to integrate the autonomous systems into larger, interdependent transportation network systems in planning the future urban infrastructure and realize the full benefits of the technologies.