From Human Negotiation to Agent Negotiation: Personal Mobility Agents in Automated Traffic

Conflicts between user preferences and automated system behavior already shape the experience of automated mobility. For example, a passenger may prefer assertive driving, yet the vehicle slows down early to follow a conservative policy or yield to other actors. Similar conflicts arise at merges, crossings, or right-of-way situations, where users must accept opaque decisions or attempt to negotiate through interfaces not designed for continuous, multi-actor relationships. This position paper argues that such approaches do not scale as mobility becomes more heterogeneous and automated. Instead, it proposes personal mobility agents that act as proxies for users, encode preferences such as comfort and safety margins, and negotiate traffic behavior with other agents under shared safety rules. The central idea is a shift from moment-to-moment user negotiation interfaces to delegation and oversight interfaces, in which proxy agents manage real-time conflicts while users can shape high-level policies and preferences.