Who is in control? Exploration of transitions of control between driver and an eLane vehicle automation

Abstract

In the future, the technical development in the car domain will allow drivers to hand over more and more driving tasks to their vehicle automation. This trend towards automation implies that transitions of control in which the driver hands over or takes back vehicle control from the automation is moved into the focus of human-factors research. At first, this article describes an assistance and automation spectrum and introduces some theoretical thoughts about transitions. Thereafter, some results of a study, conducted for the EU-funded CityMobil project, are reported. The study is based on the eLane concept, a concept bringing road infrastructure and vehicle automation together to allow highly automated driving. The study explored different transitions needed for the eLane vehicle automation in a driving simulator and the research vehicle “FASCar”. The results show a good acceptance for the eLane automation and learning effects for the handling of the system but they also give first hints of challenges in designing transitions for highly automated vehicles.