Anthropomorphic and Intelligent Assistive Systems for Automated Vehicles

Paper in proceeding, 2026

Semi-automated vehicles utilizing interactive interfaces represent a critical, emergent research field for enhancing road safety and user experience. This half-day workshop aims to advance the design and evaluation of anthropomorphic, intelligent in-car assistants to foster trust and mitigate risks like driver distraction or over-trust. Through paper presentations and interactive discussions, participants will explore agent morphology, spanning voice-only systems, screen-based interfaces, and physical robotic agents, and investigate how these agents can effectively communicate vehicle intentions and driving context. Additionally, the workshop will address the impact of these in-car assistants on driver workload and control takeovers, while establishing robust evaluation metrics, ethical guidelines, and global standardization frameworks. By bridging robotics, vehicular communication, human-machine interaction and automatic control, this workshop seeks to synthesize practical design guidance and outline a future research agenda for safer and more efficient road transportation.