Honeywell Aerospace Technologies’ Third Annual Advanced Air Mobility Summit brought together business leaders, policy makers, and industry experts to discuss the future of air travel and accelerate the path to reality for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). The event, held in Washington, D.C., concluded with a panel covering public acceptance of the innovation of new technology. Moderated by Alison Wyrick, Senior Director of Innovation for Honeywell International, the panel explored how public acceptance of AAM technology should focus on positive attitudes, equitable access, and behavioral adoption.
Jia Xu, Chief Executive Officer of SkyGrid, Nancy Harhut, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of HBT Marketing, and Dr. Lis Blanco, post-doctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, explored different approaches to public acceptance of autonomous aviation technology. Xu gave insights from a technical perspective, while Harhut and Blanco provided views from the individual and from society, respectively.
Building trust in future transportation systems depends on public acceptance. This should be approached by considering technical simplicity, behavioral science, and cultural awareness.
Acceptance from the Technical Perspective
AAM stakeholders need to demystify autonomous transportation in a relatable way and reinforce that autonomy exists to improve flight safety. One big step that will help with public acceptance is to use language that people are familiar with. Autonomy is a big word that encompasses many definitions. Breaking it down into language and analogies that the public can relate to will make people feel more comfortable with its concept.
Getting autonomous aircraft certified is another important way to drive comfort with this technology. This shows people that these aircraft are safe, validated, and backed by experience and authorities. People who have had experiences with commercial aviation have more than likely had safe experiences. But people don’t see behind-the-scenes flight systems like detect and avoid, surveillance, airspace integration, and safety risks commonly associated with human-based operations. Public understanding that autonomous systems will increase flight safety, the Artificial Intelligence systems used are assured, and behind these developments are optimized human machine teams are crucial to the adoption of new AAM technology.
Acceptance from the Individual Perspective
Public acceptance of autonomous flight depends on framing. People need to feel like they are choosing to adopt new technology and not being forced into it, but they also need to understand that this will be a default mode of transportation in the future. To counter resistance and skepticism, AAM stakeholders must show the public what is in it for them and what they will miss out on if they choose not to adopt this new technology.
People make decisions based on both emotion and facts, and stories allow people to connect to emotion and draw their own conclusions. If AAM stakeholders can tie the benefits of autonomous technology into storytelling, people will be more likely to draw their own positive conclusions about new AAM technology and stick with them.
Acceptance from the Societal Perspective
Technology is developed by people who bring their own positionality. This means that new technology can often reflect the priorities of the developers, people in power, and those who have access to resources, reinforcing existing inequities. To counter this, public acceptance and community engagement need to be incorporated early into the research and development process of new AAM technology.
People’s acceptance of new technology is often shaped by their everyday concerns, so societal acceptance is dependent on the problems that communities are concerned about and want to solve, not just what the engineers think is important. Technology is made by people and for people, so communities need to feel like their input is important and that new technology is going to be socially relevant.
Overall Acceptance
People care more about than just the technology itself- how it’s introduced, communicated, and integrated into society affects whether they will want to adopt it. Incremental changes can help with public adoption as it maintains a balance of newness and familiarity, and people often prefer things that feel familiar. They’re also more inclined to accept new things when those new things are emotionally appealing and cognitively straightforward. These approaches will help reduce resistance to new AAM technology.
