Modular Simulation-Based Physical and Emotional Assessment of Ambient Intelligence in Traffic

In this letter, we detail a modular approach for measuring the secondary physical and emotional effects of ambient intelligence (AmI) technology in traffic. Using the case of merges on to a highway, we assess the results of a system that advises the driver to change early to a lane on the left to create space for merging cars downstream (tested using a cellular automata simulation). The indirect impact of the system downstream, namely how the remaining lane changes from the merge lane to the innermost lane proceed, is then evaluated using a time-discrete, space-continuous microscopic traffic simulation tool. This yields detailed results concerning driver interactions that can also be used to derive an estimate of driver anger in the situation. We have used real geographic, traffic and psychological data to test the system, and different models are used to accomplish various tasks. The approach yields (surprisingly) negative results concerning the indirect emotional impact of this AmI intervention which may be due to the nature of the lane changing model used and the chosen parameters. We argue that such an approach is also applicable to similar types of systems, where different data and model types are suited to different scenario elements.