Event

Welcome to Fredrick Ekman’s doctoral defence!

Fredrick Ekman is defending his thesis entitled “User trust here and now but not necessarily there and then - A Design Perspective on Appropriate Trust in Automated Vehicles", February 28, 13:00-17:00 at the Virtual development lab at Chalmers, Campus Johanneberg, and you are welcome to attend!

Fredrick Ekman, is a doctoral student at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science Division Design & Human Factors, Chalmers University of Technology. In his work Fredrick investigates which factors affects trust in the human-machine interaction in self-driving vehicles, and in which way. The purpose is to create a better understanding regarding users' trust in automated systems, and the goal is to create guidelines that assists HMI designers in creating an appropriate level of trust in self-driving vehicles, with the vision to achieve a safer- and greater driving experience for the user. Interviews, questionnaires and observations are examples of methods used, to understand users trust for automated systems and vehicles.

Fredrick has been working with the SAFER associated project TRUST.

Link to the thesis and included papers can be found here.

The examinator will be Prof MariAnne Karlsson, Chalmers University and the opponent Prof John Lee, Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. MariAnne Karlsson has also been the main supervisor together with the co-supervisors s Dr. Helena Strömberg and Dr. Lars-Ola Bligård, Chalmers University.

Abstract

Automated Vehicles (AVs) such as automated cars, public transport (PT) busses and delivery bots for last-mile deliveries (LMD) may increase traffic safety, improve user comfort and reduce personnel costs. However, before we can reap the benefits of AV use, users must first trust the vehicles no matter operative domain (OD). Not only because trust is essential to user acceptance, but also because it is a prerequisite for a good user experience. However, even though user trust is important for use, acceptance and good user experience it is even more important that user trust in AVs is appropriate to the actual performance of the system. So to reap the benefits, users must fully understand the capabilities and limitations of the AV.