Operationalizing the Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles. An Engineering Perspective

In response to the many social impacts of automated mobility, in September 2020 the European Commission published "Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles," a report in which recommendations on road safety, privacy, fairness, explainability, and responsibility are drawn from a set of eight overarching principles. This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary research where philosophers and engineers joined efforts to operationalize the guidelines advanced in the report. To this aim, the authors endorse a function-based working approach to support the implementation of values and recommendations into the design of automated vehicle technologies. Based on this, they develop methodological tools to tackle issues related to personal autonomy, explainability, and privacy as domains that most urgently require fine-grained guidance due to the associated ethical risks. Even though each tool still requires further inquiry, they believe that the work might already prove the productivity of the function-based approach and foster its adoption in the CAV scientific community

Rational Materials Design for In Operando Electropolymerization of Evolvable Organic Electrochemical Transistors

Organic electrochemical transistors formed by in operando electropolymerization of the semiconducting channel are increasingly becoming recognized as a simple and effective implementation of synapses in neuromorphic hardware. However, very few studies have reported the requirements that must be met to ensure that the polymer spreads along the substrate to form a functional conducting channel. The nature of the interface between the substrate and various monomer precursors of conducting polymers through molecular dynamics simulations is investigated, showing that monomer adsorption to the substrate produces an increase in the effective monomer concentration at the surface. By evaluating combinatorial couples of monomers baring various sidechains with differently functionalized substrates, it is shown that the interactions between the substrate and the monomer precursor control the lateral growth of a polymer film along an inert substrate. This effect has implications for fabricating synaptic systems on inexpensive, flexible substrates.Funding: Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research [RMX18-0083]; Swedish Research Council [2018-06197]; European Research Council [834677]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [SFO-Mat-LiU 2009-00971]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Onnesjo Foundation</p