How well do drivers adapt to remote operation? Learning from remote drivers with on-road experience

Remote driving is a promising strategy for helping Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) navigate many environments where edge cases may otherwise limit their abilities. For some companies, remote driving is an alternative to AVs altogether. Much remote driving research has taken place in simulated or controlled environments with novice operators, leaving the needs of operators with real-world experience under-explored. This research aims to understand if experienced operators are satisfied with current production remote driving systems, if they adapt to the difference in control, and how their job satisfaction compares to in-vehicle safety driving. This paper briefly overviews recent remote driving research and presents results from a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview with experienced teleoperators. The findings indicate that operators do adjust to the new domain, but latency and network reliability remain a challenge. Likewise, standardised training practices for operators are found to be lacking

Extending teleoperated driving using a shared X-in-the-loop environment

The strong progress in modern vehicle system technology requires new methodological approaches for the development and validation of new vehicle systems. In particular, due to increasing automation, classical development methods and testing scenarios need to be evolved. Consequently, the publication focuses on an extension of teleoperated driving by the X-in-the-loop (XIL) approach. Within this framework, the classical concept based on VPN-LTE networking is analyzed and discussed at first. With this implementation, the remote control of a real vehicle is presented based on the use of a dynamic driving simulator. Especially for the development and validation of such concepts, an extension with the XIL methodology can improve this process. For this reason, the architecture of teleoperated driving is subsequently extended by networking with additional system components. The feasibility, the functionalities as well as the challenges that arise with such an extension based on the XIL methodology are shown.Within the scope of this study, the achieved transmission times for the control variables and for the video data stream are demonstrated. Based on different driving maneuvers, the achievable repeatability is discussed

The Automation of the Taxi Industry – Taxi Drivers’ Expectations and Attitudes Towards the Future of their Work

Advocates of autonomous driving predict that the occupation of taxi driver could be made obsolete by shared autonomous vehicles (SAV) in the long term. Conducting interviews with German taxi drivers, we investigate how they perceive the changes caused by advancing automation for the future of their business. Our study contributes insights into how the work of taxi drivers could change given the advent of autonomous driving: While the task of driving could be taken over by SAVs for standard trips, taxi drivers are certain that other areas of their work such as providing supplementary services and assistance to passengers would constitute a limit to such forms of automation, but probably involving a shifting role for the taxi drivers, one which focuses on the sociality of the work. Our findings illustrate how taxi drivers see the future of their work, suggesting design implications for tools that take various forms of assistance into account, and demonstrating how important it is to consider taxi drivers in the co-design of future taxis and SAV services

Measuring the Feasibility of Teleoperated Driving in Mobile Networks

Teleoperated Driving is the remote control driving of a vehicle by a human driver. The concept of Teleoperated Driving requires the use of mobile networks, which typically experience variable throughput, variable latency and uneven network coverage. To investigate whether Teleoperated Driving can be possible with contemporary mobile networks, we have conducted measurements while driving with vehicles in the real world. We used complementary measurement setups to obtain results that can be compared. The dataset consists of about 5200 km (4660 minutes) driving measurements. Results show that Teleoperated Driving could be possible, but the high variance of network parameters makes it difficult to use the system at all times. It appears that the speed of the vehicle and the distance to the base station may not influence Teleoperated Driving, while handover with changed radio technology, signal strength and distance to the teleoperation station may have an impact. Possible mitigations to overcome these problems along with a basic whitelisting approach is discussed.Peer reviewe