Acceptance and safety of automated driving vehicles is currently limited by unclearly defined driver roles, especially when transitioning between multiple levels of automated driving. The EU HADRIAN project investigates how increasing the predictability of automated driving, together with a vehicle that dynamically adapts and shapes itself like a “fluid” around the driver could improve acceptance and safety of automated driving. Over the last 2.5 years of the project, the consortium has investigated separate solutions including head-up displays, predictability displays, tutoring applications, steering wheel haptic feedback, and ambient cabin lighting. In an integration study, Virtual Vehicle now just completed a study to bring these separate innovations for the first time together in a driving simulator. Forty participants were driving the simulator alternatingly at manual, partial, and conditional automated driving level. Half of them drove in a baseline condition and the other half experienced predictable automated driving and an adaptive cockpit. Initial study results indicate that with the tested HADRIAN innovations, drivers were able to better transition back to manual driving after automated driving. The findings of this study will be used in a HADRIAN field-demonstration to demonstrate their technical feasibility and benefits in an open road environment in fall 2022.
Improving Automated Driving By Bringing together Road Infrastructure and Fluid Cockpits
