Cars to match your mood

An enclosed bay has a shell of a car with a projection system in front of it, for testing human reactions to driving situations. Stanford professor Clifford Nass has been using this rig to begin to answer the question, "How is a driver going to communicate with an autonomous car?" One thing Nass has discovered is that a car's control system personality has to mesh with the driver. A "happy" car--one that greets the driver with a cheerful "let's go!"--paired to a grumpy driver will be dismissed and not taken seriously.

According to Beiker, Nass discovered that when the "mood" of the car matches the driver, the driver is more likely to pay attention to the car and thus drive more safely. How to set the car to the driver's state of mind is a topic still undergoing research.