Personal space of autonomous car's passengers sitting in the driver's seat

International audienceThis article deals with the specific context of an autonomous car navigating in an urban center within a shared space between pedestrians and cars. The driver delegates the control to the autonomous system while remaining seated in the driver's seat. The proposed study aims at giving a first insight into the definition of human perception of space applied to vehicles by testing the existence of a personal space around the car.It aims at measuring proxemic information about the driver's comfort zone in such conditions.Proxemics, or human perception of space, has been largely explored when applied to humans or to robots, leading to the concept of personal space, but poorly when applied to vehicles. In this article, we highlight the existence and the characteristics of a zone of comfort around the car which is not correlated to the risk of a collision between the car and other road users. Our experiment includes 19 volunteers using a virtual reality headset to look at 30 scenarios filmed in 360° from the point of view of a passenger sitting in the driver's seat of an autonomous car.They were asked to say "stop" when they felt discomfort visualizing the scenarios.As said, the scenarios voluntarily avoid collision effect as we do not want to measure fear but discomfort.The scenarios involve one or three pedestrians walking past the car at different distances from the wings of the car, relative to the direction of motion of the car, on both sides. The car is either static or moving straight forward at different speeds.The results indicate the existence of a comfort zone around the car in which intrusion causes discomfort.The size of the comfort zone is sensitive neither to the side of the car where the pedestrian passes nor to the number of pedestrians. In contrast, the feeling of discomfort is relative to the car's motion (static or moving).Another outcome from this study is an illustration of the usage of first person 360° video and a virtual reality headset to evaluate feelings of a passenger within an autonomous car

"Driven to distraction?" Children's experiences of car travel

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in volume, 4, issue 1, pages 59-76 in Mobilities 2009. Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17450100802657962.Cars have become increasingly significant features in the lives of many children and adults in the UK and elsewhere. Whilst there is a growing body of research considering how adults experience automobility, that is the increasingly central role of cars within societies, there has been little equivalent research exploring children's perspectives. Drawing upon a variety of methods including personal diaries, photographs, in‐depth interviews and surveys amongst schools within Buckinghamshire and North London, the paper contributes to filling this gap in existing research through exploring how cars are not only journey spaces for children, but are also sites for play, relaxation, homework, companionship, technology and the consumption of commodities. Using a Foucauldian analysis of power, insights into wider familial processes relating to mobility are provided by exploring how cars are sites of conflicting power relations between parents and children. The paper also explores how children's everyday experiences of cars were framed by wider sets of power relations, including car corporations which design and manufacture these spaces, and the role of capital which commodifies everyday activities in cars. In doing so, the paper challenges existing research on automobility for only focusing upon adults' experiences of cars and begins to theorise a more inclusive account of automobility which incorporates children and young people

Investigation of low-cost infrared sensing for intelligent deployment of occupant restraints

In automotive transport, airbags and seatbelts are effective at restraining the driver and passenger in the event of a crash, with statistics showing a dramatic reduction in the number of casualties from road crashes. However, statistics also show that a small number of these people have been injured or even killed from striking the airbag, and that the elderly and small children are especially at risk of airbag-related injury. This is the result of the fact that in-car restraint systems were designed for the average male at an average speed of 50 km/hr, and people outside these norms are at risk. Therefore one of the future safety goals of the car manufacturers is to deploy sensors that would gain more information about the driver or passenger of their cars in order to tailor the safety systems specifically for that person, and this is the goal of this project. This thesis describes a novel approach to occupant detection, position measurement and monitoring using a low-cost thermal imaging based system, which is a departure from traditional video camera-based systems, and at an affordable price. Experiments were carried out using a specially designed test rig and a car driving simulator with members of the public. Results have shown that the thermal imager can detect a human in a car cabin mock up and provide crucial real-time position data, which could be used to support intelligent restraint deployment. Other valuable information has been detected such as whether the driver is smoking, drinking a hot or cold drink, using a mobile phone, which can help to infer the level of driver attentiveness or engagement

Tarmac cowboys : an ethnographic study of the cultural world of boy racers

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Semi-wearable seating concepts for vehicle control, medical, and wellbeing applications

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 89).This thesis explores how natural bodily movements can be translated into a control interface for vehicles. Focusing on the car, our goal is to increase human performance and wellbeing while eliminating the traditionally antagonistic relationship between comfort and freedom of movement vs. support, safety and sensing the car. We will discuss seating, traditional controls, their origins, evolution, and their implications in the context of today's cars. Based on the physical demands of the vehicle environment, and on positive body experiences from sports and other concepts of movement, we will then explore how we could re-think the function, self-image, and presentation of the human body in the context of cars. We will develop a seat prototype, which will encourage beneficial body sensations and - motions, taking into account the shapes, textures, and emotional significance of touch and movement in and by itself, and in the car environment. The core of our concept will focus on natural movements of the lower back and hips, as experienced when walking or skiing. Building on the exoskeleton-like "Athlete Seat," which blurs the boundaries between wearing and sitting in, we will develop the core prototype out towards the upper body and limbs.(cont.) We will develop a second prototype, which will have pelvic movements in the frontal plane as done when walking, bicycling, or dancing, as the basis of its concept. This prototype will be connected to a car simulator to investigate if good vehicle control can be achieved with our method. In a second stage, we will systematically evaluate the car control, wellbeing, and fun aspects in a user study. Our modular design will be usable in parts and adaptable to various uses, in vehicles, for entertainment, exercise, wellbeing, and medical purposes, improving physical condition and the way we relate to our bodies.by Patrik A. Künzler.S.M

Affective scenarios in automotive design: a human-centred approach towards understanding of emotional experience

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe automotive industry is facing a period of significant transformation due to the arrival of many new digital technologies. As the focus of automotive engineering has shifted from hardware to software, the conventional processes of making, buying and owning an automobile have changed. Peoples’ desires for new automotive experiences are increasing; they demand more sophisticated approaches to the automotive experience beyond merely improving functional requirements for advanced automation systems, interfaces and connectivity. Thus, it is essential to understand human experience in order to help people deal with the high degree of complexity in the driving environment and to help them to cope with unanticipated driving events that involve emotional, psychological or sociological issues. This research takes a human-centred approach to investigating real-life scenarios in which people emotionally engage with automobiles with the aim of developing a relevant set of scenarios for this context. An extensive literature review was conducted of human emotion, memory systems, emotional memory characteristics, scenarios, and scenarios with emotional aspects, followed by a discussion defining scenario development process and affective scenarios. This research provides a methodology for in-depth qualitative studies that develop affective design scenarios with automobiles. As a triangulation approach, two independent studies in different settings explored affective scenario themes in automotive contexts of people’s real-life car stories that made them respond emotionally. The themes that were revealed from both studies were consolidated, and exemplary scenarios of 13 consolidated main themes were formulated to illustrate a set of affective scenarios in automotive contexts. This research leads to an enhanced understanding of a set of critical contexts that automotive practitioners should take into account for future automotive design. Suggestions with possible questions based on the research outcome provide opportunities for them to agilely cope with unanticipated future events, whereby highly complex driving environment by connected and autonomous vehicles. This methodology used here can be replicated for future affective scenario studies focusing on specific products, sub-systems or services such as navigation systems or car-sharing services. The results, which have been validated through a triangulation approach, can bolster the automobile design process by addressing potential issues and challenges in automotive experience by facilitating idea generation, enhancing a shared understanding of critical contexts and by assisting decision-making among stakeholders from different departments

Busmen : a Labour Process Perspective

This thesis analyses one particular capitalist labour process, that involved in the production of bus services. Although it concentrates for the most part on the conflicts, contradictions, paradoxes and struggles at the point of production, it also seeks to locate such struggles for control by the work force within the general features of the capitalist labour process, and the industry itself within the wider political and economic context