The environment of any future autonomous vehicle (AV) anticipates humans living and interacting with AVs, and raises questions concerning the rights to the city, communications, the effects on the city and the environment. The research is focussed on questions about Connected Autonomous Renewable Energy Vehicles (CAREV) and possible deeper changes in the city fabric, semiotics and communications, and whether a systemic ‘semiotic technoecology’ arises? Developments in CAREV’s specifically, machine intelligence, will need to understand, appreciate and respond to diverse cultural phenomena, and thus CAREV’s will need to have a semiotic capacity. CAREV’s will need to fully understand and anticipate the behaviour of other spatial agents in the public realm, just as people in the streetscape will need to be able to communicate with and understand the intentions of CAREVs.

This symposium will be held over two sessions on 25 February and 4 March 2022. It has been facilitated by Colin Polwarth and other PhD researchers at the RCA. It is a collaboration between the Architecture PhD Programme and the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre (IMDC) at the RCA. It will discuss research questions, architectural multimedia and design experiments related to living with autonomous vehicles.

The panellists of the first symposium are Greg Frey, an environmental activist who will present his work, organising in Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain protests. Kam Rehal, a RCA PhD researcher will present his research in communications focussed on semiotics. Susan Young also a RCA PhD researcher will present her work on film and animation. Participants will discuss whether a future CAREV city will be safer, more liveable with more people and requiring higher standards of equality in transport and movement. Specific environmental questions will be asked of our panellists including circular economies, extraction, consumption and population development and how this related to the environmental, social and economic aspects of a future technology such as CAREV.

More information on: https://transfigcav.com/symposium-3

In late March 2022, the RCA Intelligent Mobility Design Centre (IMDC) are holding a day-long conference Mobility Metamorphosis. The conference and these symposia are related to each other.