Project Title: Social Interactions within Driverless Taxis

Supervisors: Dr Sylvaine Tuncer, Professor Paul Luff

Year of entry: 2025, full time

Yunshan Li is a PhD student with backgrounds in social anthropology and marketing. She is a member of the Work, Interaction and Technology (WIT) Research Group in the Public Services Management and Organisation (PSMO) Department.

Her research focuses on social interactions inside Level-4 autonomous taxis (which have no human driver). She explores how passengers employ embodied practices, such as body language, eye contact and gestures, to initiate and respond to environmental cues, and how they demonstrate mutual understanding in driverless environment.

This research aims to provide insights for autonomous taxi companies to optimise vehicle design, enabling self-driving taxis to better understand passengers. It also seeks to inform the development of industry safety standards, such as what basic features self-driving vehicles should provide to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers.

Her research is supported by the King's Business School Doctoral Studentship.