The psychology of driving automation: A discussion with Professor Don Norman

Introducing automation into automobiles had inevitable consequences for the driver and driving. Systems that automate longitudinal and lateral vehicle control may reduce the workload of the driver. This raises questions of what the driver is able to do with this 'spare' attentional capacity. Research in our laboratory suggests that there is unlikely to be any spare capacity because the attentional resources are not 'fixed'. Rather, the resources are inextricably linked to task demand. This paper presents some of the arguments for considering the psychological aspects of the driver when designing automation into automobiles. The arguments are presented in a conversation format, based on discussions with Professor Don Norman. Extracts from relevant papers to support the arguments are presented

Entorno virtual para diseñar y validar futuras interfaces a bordo para vehículos autónomos

[EN] This thesis presents a novel synthetic environment for supporting advanced explorations of user interfaces and interaction modalities for future transport systems. The main goal of the work is the definition of novel interfaces solutions designed for increasing trust in self-driving vehicles. The basic idea is to provide insights to the passengers concerning the information available to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) modules on-board of the car, including the driving behaviour of the vehicle and its decision making. Most of currently existing academic and industrial testbeds and vehicular simulators are designed to reproduce with high fidelity the ergonomic aspects associated with the driving experience. However, they have very low degrees of realism for what concerns the digital components of the various traffic scenarios. These includes the visuals of the driving simulator and the behaviours of both other vehicles on the road and pedestrians. High visual testbed fidelity becomes an important pre-requisite for supporting the design and evaluation of future on-board interfaces. An innovative experimental testbed based on the hyper-realistic video game GTA V, has been developed to satisfy this need. To showcase its experimental flexibility, a set of selected user studies, presenting novel self-driving interfaces and associated user experience results, are described. These explore the capabilities of inducing trust in autonomous vehicles and explore Heads-Up Displays (HUDs), Augmented Reality (ARs) and directional audio solutions. The work includes three core phases focusing on the development of software for the testbed, the definition of relevant interfaces and experiments and focused testing with panels comprising different user demographics. Specific investigations will focus on the design and exploration of a set of alternative visual feedback mechanisms (adopting AR visualizations) to gather information about the surrounding environment and AI decision making. The performances of these will be assessed with real users in respect of their capability to foster trust in the vehicle and on the level of understandability of the provided signals. Moreover, additional accessory studies will focus on the exploration of different designs for triggering driving handover, i.e. the transfer vehicle control from AI to human drivers, which is a central problem in current embodiments of self-driving vehicles.[ES] Esta tesis presenta un nuevo entorno virtual para apoyar exploraciones avanzadas de interfaces de usuario y modalidades de interacción para sistemas de transporte futuros. El objetivo principal del trabajo es la definición de soluciones de Realidad Aumentada diseñadas para aumentar la confianza en los vehículos autónomos. La idea básica es proporcionar información a los pasajeros sobre la información disponible para los módulos de Inteligencia Artificial (AI) a bordo del automóvil, incluido el comportamiento de conducción del vehículo y su toma de decisiones. El trabajo incluye tres fases centrales que se centran en el desarrollo de software para el banco de pruebas, la definición de interfaces y experimentos relevantes y pruebas enfocadas con paneles que comprenden diferentes datos demográficos de los usuarios. El entorno de trabajo específico del banco de pruebas experimental se compone de: - GTA V como entorno de prueba debido a su escenario complejo y sus gráficos hiperrealistas. - Volante y pedales para una conducción activa. - DeepGTA como marco de autocontrol. - Tobii Eye Tracking como dispositivo de entrada para las intenciones de los usuarios. Las investigaciones específicas se centrarán en el diseño y la exploración de un conjunto de mecanismos alternativos de retroalimentación visual (adopción de visualizaciones de AR) para recopilar información sobre el medio ambiente circundante y la toma de decisiones de IA. El rendimiento de estos se evaluará con los usuarios reales con respecto a su capacidad para fomentar la confianza en el vehículo y en el nivel de comprensión de las señales proporcionadas. Además, los estudios complementarios adicionales se centrarán en la exploración de diferentes diseños para activar el traspaso de conducción, es decir, el control del vehículo de transferencia de AI a los conductores humanos, que es un problema central en las realizaciones actuales de vehículos autónomos.Mateu Gisbert, C. (2018). Novel synthetic environment to design and validate future onboard interfaces for self-driving vehicles. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/112327TFG

Has the time come for an older driver vehicle?

The population of the world is growing older. As people grow older they are more likely to experience declines that can make operating a personal automobile more difficult. Once driving abilities begin to decline, older adults are often faced with decreased mobility. Due to the preference for and pervasiveness of the personal automobile for satisfying mobility needs, there is a global necessity to keep older adults driving for as long as they can safely do so. In this report we explore the question: Has the time come for an older driver vehicle? Great gains in safe mobility could be made by designing automobiles that take into account, and help overcome, some of the deficits in abilities common in older people. The report begins by providing a background and rationale for an older driver vehicle, including discussions of relevant trends, age-related declines in functional abilities, and the adverse consequences of decreased mobility. The next section discusses research and issues related to vehicle design and advanced technology with respect to older drivers. The next section explores crashworthiness issues and the unique requirements for older adults. The following section discusses the many issues related to marketing a vehicle that has been designed for older drivers. The report concludes that there is a clear global opportunity to improve the safety, mobility, and quality of life of older adults by designing vehicles and vehicle technologies that help overcome common age-related deficits. The marketing of these vehicles to older consumers, however, will be challenging and will likely require further market research. The development of vehicle design features, new automotive technologies, and crashworthiness systems in the future should be guided by both knowledge of the effects of frailty/fragility of the elderly on crash outcomes, as well as knowledge of common drivingrelated declines in psychomotor, visual, and cognitive abilities. Design strategies that allow for some degree of customization may be particularly beneficial. It is clear that training and education efforts for using new vehicle features will need to be improved.The University of Michigan Sustainable Worldwide Transportationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89960/1/102821.pd

Casting Light Upon The Great Endarkenment

While the Enlightenment promoted thinking for oneself independent of religious authority, the ‘Endarkenment’ (Millgram 2015) concerns deference to a new authority: the specialist, a hyperspecializer. Non-specialists need to defer to such authorities as they are unable to understand their reasoning. Millgram describes how humans are capable of being serial hyperspecializers, able to move from one specialism to another. We support the basic thrust of Millgram’s position, and seek to articulate how the core idea is deployed in very different ways in relation to extremely different philosophical areas. We attend to the issue of the degree of isolation of different specialists and we urge greater emphasis on parallel hyperspecialization, which describes how different specialisms can be embodied in one person at one time

Participatory Road Design: An Investigation into Improving Roads, Drivers' Attitude and Behaviour Using Partiticipatory Design

Improving road safety is currently based mostly on Education, Enforcement and Engineering or the 3 Es. Despite these measures having saved millions of lives since their inception in around 1915, millions of people are still injured or killed in accidents worldwide annually. One relatively unexplored area is the use of driver's tacit (unspoken) knowledge to help in the reduction of accidents, particularly in the area of speed management. Participatory design may offer a way to help utilise drivers' tacit (hidden) knowledge for the improvement of speed management and road safety techniques in a positive and ethical manner. Involvement in the process may also aid in the improvement of drivers' behaviour and attitudes. Previous research in participatory design indicates that the benefits of participatory design are quick acceptance of new designs and innovative solutions to difficult problems, as well as a sense of ownership of the new artefact. My research has investigated the efficacy of using participatory design in road safety. This was done by having participants take part series of four different types of workshops aimed at improving driver behaviour and attitudes as well as road design using models. The research involved a total of 105 participants with group sizes ranging from 3 to 28 people. It was found that participatory design workshops were capable of: allowing people to redesign a variety of roads and improve them by reducing their estimated speeds, without adversely affecting other ratings such as safety, aesthetics, preference and liveability; improving self reported driver behaviour; and allowing the interaction of people from various backgrounds in a positive and stimulating environment. Workshops were also rated highly as a teaching and design tool by all those involved in the process. Finally, unlike standard participatory design processes, some workshops also included more than just the design team with the inclusion of additional participants as audience members. This was also found to be a practical method of including more people in the participatory design process without reducing the effectiveness of the process