Julian Schindler

The theater-system technique: agile designing and testing of system behavior and interaction, applied to highly automated vehicles

In this paper, the theater-system technique, a method for agile designing and testing of system behavior and interaction concepts is described. The technique is based on the Wizard-of-Oz approach, originally used for emulating automated speech recognition, and is extended towards an interactive, user-centered design technique. The paper describes the design process using the theater-system technique, the technical build-up of the theater-system, and an application of the technique: the design of a haptic-multimodal interaction strategy for highly automated vehicles. The use of the theater-system in the design process is manifold: It is used for the concrete design work of the design team, for the assessment of user expectations as well as for early usability assessments, extending the principles of user-centered design towards a dynamically balanced design.

Shared and cooperative movement control of intelligent technical systems: Sketch of the design space of haptic-multimodal coupling between operator, co-automation, base system and environment

Abstract This paper sketches the concept of haptic-multimodal coupling between operator, co-automation, base system and environment. Haptic-multimodal couplings use mainly the haptic interaction resource, e.g. the combination of hands and feet with active inceptors like active sidesticks or steering wheels and complement this with e.g. visual and acoustic feedback. Haptic-multimodal couplings can serve as a base for shared control, and, if the co-automation has a minimum of understanding of and reactivity to the human operator, for a cooperative control between operator and automation. The paper gives a brief introduction of shared and cooperative control, starting with examples in the non-technical world and sketches the basic structure the couplings and coupling schemes. While much of the design space is yet to be explored and described more systematically, some combinations of haptic-multimodal couplings can already be applied, for example to the cooperative control of an intelligent ground vehicle or in telerobotics. The paper briefly describes examples of an automation-initiated de-coupling of a driver and of a helicopter pilot in case of an emergency maneuver and the coupling between an operator and a satellite control for a berthing maneuver.

JDVE: A Joint Driver-Vehicle-Environment Simulation Platform for the Development and Accelerated Testing of Automotive Assistance and Automation Systems

As virtualization of design methods in general becomes more and more relevant, one of the main goals of the EU FP7 Project ISi-PADAS is the development of a Joint Driver-Vehicle-Environment Simulation Platform (JDVE) which enables the designers of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to validate their design with driver models as well as with “real” drivers. In order to cover both test cases, it is necessary to have a highly modular software platform able to be connected to various driving simulators, or even real test vehicles, but also capable of running with a virtual driver model on a single desktop PC. As virtual driver models do not need to act in real time it is beneficial to accelerate their timing in order to cover more test cases, e.g. as application of the Response 3 Code of Practice. This paper explains the modular approach of the JDVE and describes the accelerated time feature. Furthermore it briefly sketches some possible use cases for the JDVE.

Towards Collaborative Perception for Automated Vehicles in Heterogeneous Traffic

In the near future Automated Vehicles (AVs) will be part of the vehicular traffic on the roads. Normally, all automation levels will be granted on the road based on the different road situations, but challenging situations will still exist that AVs will not be able to handle safely and efficiently. AVs driving at a high automation level may step down to the lower automation level and handover the partial/full control to the driver when the automation system reaches its functional system limits or encounters unexpected situations. This paper briefly explains the H2020 TransAID project covering the transition phases between different levels of automation. It will review related work and introduce the concept to investigate automation level changes. Furthermore, the collective sensor data processing architecture using for demonstrators and the selected use cases are presented.