Autonomous Vehicles: Human Factors Challenges and Opportunities

Automated vehicles are those in which at least some aspects of a safety-critical control function occur without direct driver input. It is predicted that automated vehicles, especially those capable of “driving themselves”, will improve road safety and provide a range of other transport and societal benefits. A fundamental issue, from a human factors perspective, is how to design automation so that drivers understand fully the capabilities and limitations of the vehicle, and maintain situational awareness of what the vehicle is doing and when manual intervention is needed – especially for first generation vehicles that require drivers to resume manual control of automated functions when the vehicle is incapable of controlling itself. The purpose of this paper is to document some of the human factors challenges associated with the transition from manually driven to self-driving vehicles, and to outline what we can be doing in Australia, through research and other means, to address them._x000D_