My partner was Rafael and his technology was Autonomous Cars and his Salient Identity was language. He chose the Autonomous Cars because he was interested in them. He chose language as his salient identity as his parents speak in his native tongue when he is at home and he understands it, but he can't speak it that well. Which I relate to because that is what I do at home as well. My parents speak Sinhalese to me at home and I reply in English.
When I first started doing research. I could not find any information about different languages and autonomous, but I find a lot of super interesting information about the language of the road and how autonomous vehicles would be able to interpret all of that. The first article I found, discussed the language of driving and how that could translate to autonomous cars. What I found perplexing is that although we may not notice it, there are a lot of hand gestures or sounds or movements we do to signal things to other drivers. Some of them being, waving to go when multiple cars at an intersection, flashing your blinkers to notify someone their brights are on, and emergency sirens from ambulances. Another great part of this article is that it discusses how there are different signals that vary by country or region. The author discusses how in Cairo, Egypt certain combinations of honks have different meanings. "Four short honks followed by a long one mean open your eyes to warn someone who is not paying attention". In Morocco, drivers honk in passing, one honk before passing someone and again as you pass to signal you are passion, and one after to say "thank you". This is interesting because the author notes that this could be seen as rude to drivers in the US (which is totally true). This relates a lot to Rafael's situation with the language because if humans can't understand different "road rules" that happen around the world, how can an autonomous car. With a human behind the wheel, you are able to analyze the other drivers emotions and tone if you are driving in a new country and figure out how to navigate the area. Currently, a lot of autonomous car developers are facing the problem of how if an autonomous car fails to recognize a signal by another driver, the results could be life threatening.
Another article I read, talked about how to fix the problem of the language barrier between Autonomous vehicles (AV) and other drivers or pedestrians. They came up with a system that would have the AVs be mounted with a projector that could project signals onto the road to signal things to other drivers. These symbols would be universally recognized like a Octagon shape or a hand to mean stop and a person walking to tell the pedestrian they can go ahead. I think this idea would be super creative and could fix the barrier between different regions and different signals, but it would be a lot to tell people that they have to learn the new rules of the road to support AVs.
Overall, I don't know if this will help Rafael that much because it doesn't directly address the reasons why he picked language as a salient identity, but it is a take on what language means to autonomous cars and the barrier that comes with it.