Designing for comfort in shared and automated vehicles (SAV): a conceptual framework

To date, automotive design and research is heavily biased towards the driver. However, with the rapid advance of vehicle automation, the driving task will increasingly being taken over by a machine. Automation by itself, however, will not be able to tackle the transport challenges we are facing and the need for shared mobility is now widely recognized. Future mobility solutions are therefore expected to consist of Shared and Automated Vehicles (SAV). This means that the passenger experience will take center stage in the design of future road vehicles. Whereas at first sight this may not appear to be different to the experience in other modes of transport, automation and shared mobility introduce different psychological, physical and physiological challenges. These are related to the fact that the occupant is no longer in control, has to put his or her life in the hands of a computer, while at the same time expects such future vehicles to render travel time more efficient or pleasurable and engage in so-called non-driving related tasks. Taking inspiration from work conducted in the field of aircraft passenger comfort experience, we discuss major comfort factors in the context of SAV and highlight both similarities and differences between transport modes. We present a human centered design framework to assist both the research agenda and the development of safe, usable, comfortable, and desirable future mobility solutions

The potassic sedimentary rocks in Gale Crater, Mars, as seen by ChemCam on board Curiosity

The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity encountered potassium-rich clastic sedimentary rocks at two sites in Gale Crater, the waypoints Cooperstown and Kimberley. These rocks include several distinct meters thick sedimentary outcrops ranging from fine sandstone to conglomerate, interpreted to record an ancient fluvial or fluvio-deltaic depositional system. From ChemCam Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) chemical analyses, this suite of sedimentary rocks has an overall mean K2O abundance that is more than 5 times higher than that of the average Martian crust. The combined analysis of ChemCam data with stratigraphic and geographic locations reveals that the mean K2O abundance increases upward through the stratigraphic section. Chemical analyses across each unit can be represented as mixtures of several distinct chemical components, i.e., mineral phases, including K-bearing minerals, mafic silicates, Fe-oxides, and Fe-hydroxide/oxyhydroxides. Possible K-bearing minerals include alkali feldspar (including anorthoclase and sanidine) and K-bearing phyllosilicate such as illite. Mixtures of different source rocks, including a potassium-rich rock located on the rim and walls of Gale Crater, are the likely origin of observed chemical variations within each unit. Physical sorting may have also played a role in the enrichment in K in the Kimberley formation. The occurrence of these potassic sedimentary rocks provides additional evidence for the chemical diversity of the crust exposed at Gale Crater

Influence of music on driver psychology and safety-relevant behaviours: a multi-study inductive content analysis

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1463922X.2021.2009933 .Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Underpinned by pragmatism and symbolic interactionism, an inductive content analysis was conducted to assess driving experiences under a variety of music conditions. Many quantitative studies have addressed the effects of music on drivers, but there has been a conspicuous dearth of qualitative research to provide a more nuanced understanding of music-related phenomena. Data collection took place over three simulated driving studies, each with different tasks/participants (Study 1 – n = 34, Study 2 – n = 46, and Study 3 – n = 27). The inductive content analysis was conducted by two members of the research team and a peer debriefing was conducted by a third. Findings show that music can have a range of affective, behavioural and cognitive effects (both positive and negative), that are moderated by the driving environment (i.e. urban vs. highway) and aspects of the musical stimulus (i.e. inclusion/non-inclusion of lyrics, loudness and tempo). Participants were mindful of the implications of in-vehicle music vis-à-vis the safety–performance–pleasure trade-off. The analysis suggested a perceived beneficial effect of music and consequent contribution to driving style/safety-related performance. Younger drivers’ apparent reliance on music as a means by which to regulate their emotion highlights an education need in terms of optimising selections.UKRI Economic and Social Research Council grant (ES/R005559/1); Direct Line Group (UK)

Psychological and psychophysiological effects of music intensity and lyrics on simulated urban driving

© 2021 The Authors. The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of musical characteristics (i.e., presence of lyrics and loudness) in the context of simulated urban driving. Previous work has seldom isolated musical characteristics and examined these both singularly and interactively. We investigated the potentially distracting effects of processing lyrics through exposing young drivers to the same piece of music with/without lyrics and at different sound intensities (60 dBA [soft] and 75 dBA [loud]) using a counterbalanced, within-subjects design (N = 34; Mage = 22.2 years, SD = 2.0 years). Six simulator conditions were included that comprised low-intensity music with/without lyrics, high-intensity music with/without lyrics, plus two controls – ambient in-car noise and spoken lyrics. Between-subjects variables of driving style (defensive vs. assertive) and sex (women vs. men) were explored. A key finding was that the no lyrics/soft condition yielded lower affective arousal scores when compared to the other music conditions. There was no main effect of condition for HRV data (SDNN and RMSSD). Exploratory analyses showed that, for assertive drivers, NASA-TLX Performance scores were lower in the no lyrics/soft condition compared to the lyrics/loud condition. Moreover, women exhibited higher mean heart rate than men in the presence of lyrics. Although some differences emerged in subjective outcomes, these were not replicated in HRV, which was used as an objective index of emotionality. Drivers should consider the use of soft, non-lyrical music to optimise their affective state during urban driving.UKRI Economic and Social Research Council grant (ES/R005559/ 1); Direct Line Group (UK)

Understanding consumer demand for new transport technologies and services, and implications for the future of mobility

The transport sector is witnessing unprecedented levels of disruption. Privately owned cars that operate on internal combustion engines have been the dominant modes of passenger transport for much of the last century. However, recent advances in transport technologies and services, such as the development of autonomous vehicles, the emergence of shared mobility services, and the commercialization of alternative fuel vehicle technologies, promise to revolutionise how humans travel. The implications are profound: some have predicted the end of private car dependent Western societies, others have portended greater suburbanization than has ever been observed before. If transport systems are to fulfil current and future needs of different subpopulations, and satisfy short and long-term societal objectives, it is imperative that we comprehend the many factors that shape individual behaviour. This chapter introduces the technologies and services most likely to disrupt prevailing practices in the transport sector. We review past studies that have examined current and future demand for these new technologies and services, and their likely short and long-term impacts on extant mobility patterns. We conclude with a summary of what these new technologies and services might mean for the future of mobility.Comment: 15 pages, 0 figures, book chapte

Background Light in Potential Sites for the ANTARES Undersea Neutrino Telescope

The ANTARES collaboration has performed a series of {\em in situ} measurements to study the background light for a planned undersea neutrino telescope. Such background can be caused by $^{40}$K decays or by biological activity. We report on measurements at two sites in the Mediterranean Sea at depths of 2400~m and 2700~m, respectively. Three photomultiplier tubes were used to measure single counting rates and coincidence rates for pairs of tubes at various distances. The background rate is seen to consist of three components: a constant rate due to $^{40}$K decays, a continuum rate that varies on a time scale of several hours simultaneously over distances up to at least 40~m, and random bursts a few seconds long that are only correlated in time over distances of the order of a meter. A trigger requiring coincidences between nearby photomultiplier tubes should reduce the trigger rate for a neutrino telescope to a manageable level with only a small loss in efficiency.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astroparticle Physic

Search for the glueball candidates f0(1500) and fJ(1710) in gamma gamma collisions

Data taken with the ALEPH detector at LEP1 have been used to search for gamma gamma production of the glueball candidates f0(1500) and fJ(1710) via their decay to pi+pi-. No signal is observed and upper limits to the product of gamma gamma width and pi+pi- branching ratio of the f0(1500) and the fJ(1710) have been measured to be Gamma_(gamma gamma -> f0(1500)). BR(f0(1500)->pi+pi-) < 0.31 keV and Gamma_(gamma gamma -> fJ(1710)). BR(fJ(1710)->pi+pi-) < 0.55 keV at 95% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Search for CP Violation in the Decay Z -> b (b bar) g

About three million hadronic decays of the Z collected by ALEPH in the years 1991-1994 are used to search for anomalous CP violation beyond the Standard Model in the decay Z -> b \bar{b} g. The study is performed by analyzing angular correlations between the two quarks and the gluon in three-jet events and by measuring the differential two-jet rate. No signal of CP violation is found. For the combinations of anomalous CP violating couplings, ${\hat{h}}_b = {\hat{h}}_{Ab}g_{Vb}-{\hat{h}}_{Vb}g_{Ab}$ and $h^{\ast}_b = \sqrt{\hat{h}_{Vb}^{2}+\hat{h}_{Ab}^{2}}$, limits of \hat{h}_b < 0.59$and$h^{\ast}_{b} < 3.02$ are given at 95\% CL.Comment: 8 pages, 1 postscript figure, uses here.sty, epsfig.st

The Antares Collaboration : Contributions to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015, The Hague)

The ANTARES detector, completed in 2008, is the largest neutrino telescope in the Northern hemisphere. Located at a depth of 2.5 km in the Mediterranean Sea, 40 km off the Toulon shore, its main goal is the search for astrophysical high energy neutrinos. In this paper we collect the 21 contributions of the ANTARES collaboration to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015). The scientific output is very rich and the contributions included in these proceedings cover the main physics results, ranging from steady point sources, diffuse searches, multi-messenger analyses to exotic physics

Performance of the First ANTARES Detector Line

In this paper we report on the data recorded with the first Antares detector line. The line was deployed on the 14th of February 2006 and was connected to the readout two weeks later. Environmental data for one and a half years of running are shown. Measurements of atmospheric muons from data taken from selected runs during the first six months of operation are presented. Performance figures in terms of time residuals and angular resolution are given. Finally the angular distribution of atmospheric muons is presented and from this the depth profile of the muon intensity is derived.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure