THE NAVIGATOR

For future vehicles, communication equals trust

It's said that communication is the key to trust. Between us humans, we need to honestly communicate our intentions to build trust. But in any relationship, communicating can be a complex problem and parties often don't draw the same conclusions from the same message.

Now shift the relationship from person-to-person to person-to-automated vehicle with “intentions” that may be far more opaque. That's the challenge facing Dr. Melissa Cefkin and her colleagues at Nissan-and every other company involved in autonomous-vehicle development-as we move into the next era of mobility.