SUaaVE 2020 Abstracts


Full Papers
Paper Nr: 1
Title:

Development of an Immersive Simulation Platform to Study Interactions between Automated Vehicles and Pedestrians

Authors:

Lucie Lévêque, Thierry Bellet, Jean-Charles Bornard, Jonathan Deniel, Maud Ranchet, Estelle De Baere and Bertrand Richard

Abstract: The importance of informal communication between manual vehicles drivers and pedestrians in order to prevent misinterpretation, and thus accidents, in road-crossing situations has been widely shown in the literature. Such crucial communication consequently raises the issue of the introduction of automated vehicles (AVs) on the roads, in which case the status of the driver becomes less obvious. In this paper, we present a novel simulation platform, the V-HCD, allowing the conduct of immersive experimentations, both from the pedestrian’s and the driver’s point of view. This platform will be used to study the acceptance of the automated vehicle for the European SUaaVE project, and further to support the human-centred design of a future empathic AV.

Paper Nr: 2
Title:

Traded Control Architecture for Automated Vehicles Enabled by the Scene Complexity Estimation

Authors:

Juan F. Medina-Lee, Jorge Villagra and Antonio Artuñedo

Abstract: A number of urban driving situations are still today too challenging to be handled by an autonomous driving system (ADS), and an intervention from humans inside the vehicle may be necessary. In this work, a novel traded control architecture is proposed to enhance the operational domain of the ADS under the premise that vehicles and humans may need to adapt their cooperation level depending on the context. To that end, a complexity level will be defined and computed in real time for each driving scene, and the role of the ADS and the human operator will be defined accordingly. With this information in hand, the system will alert the human operator when the involvement level will be lower than required or when a complex scene is detected.

Paper Nr: 4
Title:

The Estimation of Occupants’ Emotions in Connected and Automated Vehicles

Authors:

Juan-Manuel Belda-Lois, Sofía Iranzo, Javier Silva, Begoña Mateo, Nicolás Palomares, José Laparra-Hernández and José S. Solaz

Abstract: One critical factor of success and user acceptance in connected automated vehicles (CAVs) is trust in technology, being the main obstacle that remains from a customer’s perspective. Trust in automated systems is based on feelings of safety and acceptance, being the emotional process the most influential aspect. One of the main ambitions of SUaaVE project (SUpporting acceptance of automated VEhicle) is to develop an emotional model to understand the passenger’s state during the trip (in Real-Time), based on body biometrics, allowing to adapt the vehicle features to enhance the in-vehicle user experience, while increasing trust, and therefore acceptance. This research addressed a initial experiments to identify changes in the emotional state of the occupants in different driving experiences (in a driving simulator and in real conditions) by measuring and analysing the physiological signals of the participants, serving as a basis for the generation of the emotional model. The results showed that it is possible to estimate the level of Arousal and Valence of the participants during the journey from the analysis of ECG, EMG and GSR signals. These results have positive implications for the automobile industry facilitating a better integration of human factor in the deployment of CAV.

Short Papers
Paper Nr: 3
Title:

Evaluation of a New System in Future L4 Vehicles: Use Cases and Methodology for the SUaaVE European Project

Authors:

Davide Salanitri, James Jackson and Cristina Periago

Abstract: The current era is experiencing an epochal technological advancement in the automotive industry, with electrification, automation and connectivity driving research and innovation. Various disciplines involved in the design and development of vehicles are affected by this progress and new aspects, such as acceptance, trust, ethics and emotions which will become fundamental components of the market. All these aspects will be investigated in the project SUaaVE. SUaaVE is a European project aiming at improving the users’ acceptance, trust and comfort of future Level 4 automated vehicles by involving the user in the development of the concept of a new system called ALFRED. This paper will describe the methodology developed for the evaluation of ALFRED, by representation of future vehicle use cases to be used as a means for assessment.