The development of the new technologies of information and communication is going, in the coming years, to transform deeply the uses and the practices in transport. If the driving task has evolved little since the creation of the motor vehicle, this situation is changing today under the combined effect of the widespread of driver information and communication systems implemented in-vehicle and the emergence of advanced driver assistance systems.
Through these various systems, a certain number of functions are proposed to the driver with the objective to facilitate one’s driving task and to improve the safety of one’s travel.
For example:
 The access to navigation information allows a lowering of the attentional level involved in orientation process of the driving situation.
The diffusion of traffic or meteorological information in real time, allows the activation of anticipation process for critical situations avoidance.
The adaptive cruise control, while maintaining a safe headway with the car ahead, decreases the drivers’ stress and mental load.
The active assistance systems conceived specifically to take effect in accidental situations, can balance some reaction latencies and decision uncertainties of drivers. But if the current developments, in the field of road telematics and driver assistance systems, can constitute a real opportunity of help for the mobility and a real improvement of the road safety, they raise nevertheless numerous questions about their acceptability by drivers and about possible modifications of behaviour or attitudes. For instance, the emergence of automation technologies, that is assistance systems being able to take care of some control tasks traditionally assigned to the driver, brings the question of the tasks dispatching between human and machine, as well as the choice of the logic used for the management of this control sharing.
The effective realisation of the expected benefits depends on conditions of systems implementation: in particular, to which extend the system responds to drivers needs, is compatible with their functional capacities and satisfies the criteria of relevance, usability and acceptability. This argues for a more active participation of the Human Sciences in the various stages of systems conception and for a concept of technological development determinedly centred on Humans, in which the assistance is designed according to the human being needs and not driven by the technological offer.
The human factors competencies exist in Europe, but are scattered through various countries and various research institutes or universities. To obtain effective and quick results in this domain, it is necessary to integrate the research capacities in Europe. For that, 23 research institutes joined together to constitute the Network of Excellence HUMANIST aiming at federating the research in the domain of user/system interactions and their applications on in-vehicle information systems and advanced driver assistance systems and creating at term a European Virtual Centre on these topics.
The project is supported by the Directorate General of Information Society of the European Commission. The consortium will receive from European Community a grant for integration whose amount is equal to 5 360 000 €.
The key issue of HUMANIST Network of Excellence is to promote Human centred design for IVIS and ADAS to conceive them according to drivers’ needs and requirements in order to ensure their acceptability and to improve road safety. |
