What impressions do users have after a ride in an automated shuttle? An interview study

In the future, automated shuttles may provide on-demand transport and serve as feeders to public transport systems. However, automated shuttles will only become widely used if they are accepted by the public. This paper presents results of an interview study with 30 users of an automated shuttle on the EUREF (Europäisches Energieforum) campus in Berlin-Schöneberg to obtain in-depth understanding of the acceptance of automated shuttles as feeders to public transport systems. From the interviews, we identified 340 quotes, which were classified into six categories: (1) expectations about the capabilities of the automated shuttle (10% of quotes), (2) evaluation of the shuttle performance (10%), (3) service quality (34%), (4) risk and benefit perception (15%), (5) travel purpose (25%), and (6) trust (6%). The quotes indicated that respondents had idealized expectations about the technological capabilities of the automated shuttle, which may have been fostered by the media. Respondents were positive about the idea of using automated shuttles as feeders to public transport systems but did not believe that the shuttle will allow them to engage in cognitively demanding activities such as working. Furthermore, 20% of respondents indicated to prefer supervision of shuttles via an external control room or steward on board over unsupervised automation. In conclusion, even though the current automated shuttle did not live up to the respondents’ expectations, respondents still perceived automated shuttles as a viable option for feeders to public transport systems.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport and PlanningHuman-Robot InteractionIntelligent VehiclesTransport and Plannin

Assessing the Effect of Drivers' Gender on Their Intention to Use Fully Automated Vehicles

Although fully automated vehicles (SAE level 5) are expected to acquire a major relevance for transportation dynamics by the next few years, the number of studies addressing their perceived benefits from the perspective of human factors remains substantially limited. This study aimed, firstly, to assess the relationships among drivers' demographic factors, their assessment of five key features of automated vehicles (i.e., increased connectivity, reduced driving demands, fuel and trip-related efficiency, and safety improvements), and their intention to use them, and secondly, to test the predictive role of the feature' valuations over usage intention, focusing on gender as a key differentiating factor. For this cross-sectional research, the data gathered from a sample of 856 licensed drivers (49.4% females, 50.6% males; M = 40.05 years), responding to an electronic survey, was analyzed. Demographic, driving-related data, and attitudinal factors were comparatively analyzed through robust tests and a bias-corrected Multi-Group Structural Equation Modeling (MGSEM) approach. Findings from this work suggest that drivers' assessment of these AV features keep a significant set of multivariate relationships to their usage intention in the future. Additionally, and even though there are some few structural similarities, drivers' intention to use an AV can be differentially explained according to their gender. So far, this research constitutes a first approximation to the intention of using AVs from a MGSEM gender-based approach, being these results of potential interest for researchers and practitioners from different fields, including automotive design, transport planning and road safety