Design guidelines for acceptable, transparent, and safe AVs in urban environments : Deliverable 2.6 in the EC ITN project SHAPE-IT

Report, 2023

This Deliverable summarises the work of ESRs 1, 5, 7 and 12 of the SHAPE-IT project that considered how a range of human states such as attention, fatigue and mental workload are affected by SAE Level 2 and 3 automated vehicles (AVs), when compared to manual driving, and what this means for AV and road safety. The studies also consider how AV safety and acceptance can increase with Human Machine Interface (HMI) transparency, and what factors contribute to the improvement of this transparency. An investigation of what aspects of an AV’s HMIs, its driving environment and driving style, contribute to the perceived safety, comfort and trust for its users is provided, and new methods and frameworks for enhancing these states are introduced. By considering how human factors concepts and knowledge should be embraced by software developers and AV engineers, ESRs 8 and 15 highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to AV development. Finally, the work of ESR2 focuses on how AV trust, acceptance, and transparency changes with prolonged and repeated use of AVs, emphasising that successful deployment of AVs must embrace human factors knowledge during all stages of AV development. This work also highlights that as long as AVs require human interaction and intervention, including a diverse user group, and ensuring the appropriate level of trust is built at each stage of the interaction, will improve the correct and safe use of AVs.