News

The first open call for SAFER's partners to collaborate in pre-studies has generated two projects, both linked to a safe introduction of self-driving vehicles. This area, and the research questions around it, is one of SAFER's focused research areas and fits well in the overall strategic plan. The SAFER pre-studies aim to stimulate strategic knowledge creation needed to take SAFER forward and contributes to the continued development of the joint collaboration platform.

Human factors for remote control
The pre-study Human factors related to remote control of automated heavy vehicles aims to create in-depth knowledge on human factor challenges in the context of remote control of heavy automated vehicles. The pre-study will increase knowledge on potential safety challenges regarding remote control of automated trucks and help framing a larger research project that will explore these challenges in more detail and develop solutions for them. The project will build upon previously conducted projects in the field and strives after to provide more in-depth knowledge on human factors that have not been addressed yet. The focus will be on gathering theoretical and practical experiences and knowledge, both from the area of remote control of automated vehicles and from other domains, e.g., traffic control centers at airports, nuclear power stations, etc. where remote control has been in use for many years. Partners in this study are RISE and Scania.

Human-machine interaction in automated mode
In the state-of-the-art Automated Driving Systems (ADS), one of the main problems is identified as the ‘out-of-the-loop’ condition when the human-driver is in the role of supervising the ADS together with traffic environment and is not actively engaged in the control of the vehicle. The average human-driver is not trained in supervisory control of advanced automation systems, although this type of training is a necessity in human pilots for aviation industry. For ground transportation, the time constants are shorter, and the safety-critical events are more immediate and dangerous, i.e. involving rich interaction patterns between the traffic, vehicles and the environment. The project Smart-Loop (Design of multi-modal human-machine-interaction system for keeping the driver in-the-loop in automated driving systems) aims to study various combinations of HMI modalities in different driving-contexts involving an ADAS and fully-automated driving system. The idea is to explore the potential of haptic and kinesiologic feedback, i.e. motion cues and the best combination of these modalities with audio-visual channels to achieve higher driver/passenger engagement and situation awareness.

The partners that collaborate in Smart-Loop are Chalmers and VTI. The project in tandem with SoT-Multicue project will result in development of a multi-modal feedback system for increasing the ‘driver engagement’ in automated driving. Using the preliminary results from this SAFER pre-study and the SoT-Multicue project, an application for an FFI/Vinnova project is planned in 2020.

Second call is now open
The second call for pre-studies is open and application deadline is January 31, 2020. You can read more about the call below. It is important that the applications are multidisciplinary, that is, that several partners will be active in the work. The pre-studies should proactively stimulate project generation to maximize the benefits of our multi-disciplinary platform and obtain a broad commitment, both between partners and within research areas. Projects should focus on selected areas that help meet SAFER’s overall vision, research objectives and also support the UN Sustainable Development Goals.