Benjamin Franz

Development of a cooperative system behavior for a highly automated vehicle guidance concept based on the Conduct-by-Wire principle

Conduct-by-Wire (CbW) is a research project which breaks away from todays vehicle guidance by shifting the vehicle control task from a stabilization level to a conducting level. Instead of continuous stabilization on a designated trajectory - using the conventional control elements for manual steering, braking and accelerating - a Conduct-by-Wire vehicle is controlled by means of maneuver commands. By keeping the driver in the loop, the vehicle guidance is cooperatively shared between the driver and the automation. This article introduces an approach for the analysis of realizable automation levels and the design of a cooperative system behavior depending on the interaction concept between the human driver and the automation. Following a top-down approach, different driving scenarios are systematically analyzed as to the information needs that occur. This approach builds the basis for assessing the technical feasibility of a maneuver-based vehicle guidance concept based on the Conduct-by-Wire principle.

Improving privacy settings for facebook by using interpersonal distance as criterion

The possibility to define custom privacy settings in Facebook has been improved over the last years. Still, numerous users do not know how to change those settings or do not use the settings because they are cumbersome to use. Within this paper a new method for defining the privacy settings in online social networks is presented that uses the social distance between users as setting criterion. This approach was tested as a paper prototype in a first user study with 10 participants. Results show that the number of errors was significantly decreased and that the subjective evaluation of the interface was promising.

User acceptance of cooperative maneuver- based driving - a summary of three studies

Modern cars offer drivers support with the help of a number of driver assistance systems. Those systems aim to relieve drivers through assumption of sub parts of the driving task (e.g. in case of an Adaptive Cruise Control by regulation of vehicle speed and time gap to preceding vehicle). Today, systems are controlled and monitored separately which leads to efforts to combine the functionality of all systems in an overlying assistance for drivers. The approach of the University of Technology Darmstadt is called Conduct-by-Wire and can be seen as a cooperative maneuver-based driving paradigm, where the driver gives maneuver command to the systems which are automatically executed. This paper summarizes the results of three studies which investigated the user acceptance of this driving paradigm. Overall, it can be said that the acceptance of the system depends on personal traits of the driver and on the driving situation. Almost all participants are willing to use Conduct-by- Wire for routine tasks such as commuting, which makes the systems interesting for company cars. Still, there remain a number of drivers who are not willing to use such a highly automated system at all.

Temporal analysis of the gate concept as enabler for highly automated driving based on the Conduct-by-Wire approach

Conduct-by-Wire (CbW) is an innovative vehicle guidance concept that shifts the vehicle control task from the stabilization level to the guidance level. Instead of continuous stabilization on a designated trajectory - using the conventional control elements for manual steering, braking and accelerating - a CbW vehicle is controlled by means of maneuver commands. One important element on the way to realizing CbW might be the gate concept that consists in a segmentation of the vehicle guidance task and the identification of decision points during the execution of a drivers maneuver command. This article introduces an approach for the analysis of the time available for decision-making in systematically derived scenarios. For the first time, the results offer the basis for a suitability evaluation of the gate concept and thus a fundamental contribution to the technical feasibility assessment of CbW.

Conduct-by-Wire

1 Der Beitrag zu dieser Veroffentlichung wurde wahrend der Tatigkeit als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Fachgebiet Fahrzeugtechnik der Technischen Universitat Darmstadt erarbeitet.