WHEN: MONDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2019

Automotive industry research and development is taking place all over the world. Yet, the research that is presented at Auto-UI has so far mostly been from Europe and Northern America. In effect, our community is missing out on important trends and developments that happen in other countries and continents. Moreover, driving cultures and automotive customer expectations might be very different between countries. As the Auto-UI community is growing, a more global perspective is needed to aid the design and evaluation of (in-) car technology, technology use, and user experience. Moreover, such a platform can stimulate cross-nation collaboration.

The aim of this panel is to provide a platform to discuss these matters. Key researchers and practitioners from a variety of continents have been asked to discuss relevant topics, such as:

• What are hot topics in the Auto-UI domain in your country?
• What are important challenges? How can members from other countries contribute to this area?
• How is the research focus or context different in your country compared to for example Europe or North America?

Dr Ronald Schroeter completed his PhD at the Urban Informatics Research Lab, QUT, in 2012, during which he developed the award-winning “Discussions In Space,” a fun, fast-paced, short-text platform for public urban screens and mobile phones that facilitates public civic engagement, collective expression and public discourse among (particularly young) local citizens.

He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety – Queensland (CARRS-Q), QUT (Brisbane, Australia). His research focus is the design of innovative driving experiences that make transport by car or bike more fun and safe. This work allows him to embrace multidisciplinary research across HCI/HMI, psychology and road safety.

He has led and won several ARC competitive grants, including a prestigious Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), an ARC Discovery on intention awareness in autonomous cars, and an ARC Linkage with industry partners where he explores using Augmented Reality to influence driver states. He currently leads all HMI related activities of the iMove project No:1-002 “Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) Pilot – Field Operational Test (FOT) and Evaluation”.

International University of Management, Namibia Nic Bidwell’s research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has over 15-year’s success in community-based tech design in the Global South. This mostly comprises designing with rural inhabitants of Argentina, Australia, India, Kenya, Indonesia, Mexico, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Uganda, including indigenous groups, that is sensitive to local practices and meanings in relation to innovation and inclusion. Nic continues to be instrumental in the field of Community Networks in Africa and elsewhere, and has received recognition for the sustained social impact of her community collaborations. She is also known for catalysing new directions in HCI e.g. initiating the first indigenous-led digital design panel (2008), first publications about decolonalism (2015) in the ACM and co-founded AfriCHI, the African ACM conference on HCI. It was inevitable that ride-sharing would become a subject of Nic's collaborations and graduate student projects, given its role in people's everyday lives in the Global South, and her interest in P2P apps. This work includes ethnographically-informed designs of different mobile apps to support shared motor vehicle transport for short city trips (e.g commuter) and for long distances (e.g. 200 -1,000Km) in Namibia; trialling an app to enable car-sharing by university students in Namibia; and studying the ways the Ola app, which connects passengers to auto rickshaws in India, changed drivers work practices.

Yong Gu JI received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from Seoul National University and his Ph.D. in 2001 from Purdue University with Ergonomics and HCI. He has been engaged in research and education as a professor since 2002 and is currently at Yonsei University. Since 2002, he has been conducting various researches on Ergonomics and HCI. His research interests include driver behavior in autonomous vehicles, driver complexity in visual information and device control, and UX on the smart device.

Ignacio Alvarez is a Senior Research Scientist at the Autonomous Driving Research Lab in Intel Labs where he develops, Software, System Architectures and Simulation Tools to accelerate the adoption of safe automated driving technologies. Previous to Intel, Ignacio worked for 8 years at BMW leading R&D and product development for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, Vehicle Telematics Services and User Interface Solutions in Europe, America and Asia. Ignacio received his International PhD in Computer Science from University of the Basque Country (Spain) and Clemson University (USA) in 2011, M.S. in Media Computer Science in Offenburg University (Germany) and B.S. in Communication Sciences from Burgos University (Spain). Ignacio’s research is focused on the development of intelligent connected automated vehicles that augment human mobility with safer and more enjoyable experiences.

The other panel members to be announced soon!

When: Tuesday 24 September 2019

The automotive domain will experience many radical changes over the coming years, such as the introduction of semi-automated vehicles, mobility as a service, and the development of smart cities. These and other changes will affect human-car interaction dramatically. The implications on for example legislation and road design are substantial. Unfortunately, the discussions (and actions) with respect to these themes are slower than technological progress. Therefore, this year Auto-UI provides a platform to discuss how governments, together with industry and academia, prepare themselves for current and future developments in the Auto-UI field. The panel will consist of members from government, industry, and academia and will provide and discuss together and with the audience their perspectives on Auto-UI research. 

Example questions and themes that will be discussed are:  

• How should governments best prepare for current and future developments in Auto-UI?
• What should the driver’s license of the future be like?
• What is (or should be) the role of road authorities in the future?
• What degree of regulation is needed? Or should the market regulate itself?
• What is the role of “smart cities” and other tech developments such as “mobility as a service?” 
• How to balance competitive demands, such as personal mobility, transportation speed and services, and environmental impact?

Andrew Kun is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, and director of the UNH Human-Computer Interaction Lab. In his research he has primarily focused on the design and evaluation of speech interfaces and augmented-reality interfaces in vehicles, on exploring emerging trends in human-computer interaction for automated vehicles, and on the use of visual behavior and pupil diameter changes to model the relationships between user interface characteristics and user performance and satisfaction. Currently, he serves as Steering Committee co-chair of the ACM AutomotiveUI conference series, associate editor of the IEEE Pervasive Computing magazine, program co-chair of the 2020 ACM Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interactions (TEI) conference, and program co-chair of the 2020 ACM MobileHCI conference.

Tom Gasser, law graduate of Frankfurt/Main University, joined BASt (German Federal Highway Research Institute) in autumn 2005 and has been working on legal issues of Driver Assistance Systems interacting with the human driver as the responsible legal entity. Analysing vehicle automation from the legal point has led him to fundamental work on definitions (now part of the SAE J3016-standard) and the research questions related to driver skills required for the traffic safety relevant interaction with special focus on Level 2 and 3-automation. He is now inter alia leading a team of psychologists in the field of Human-Machine-Interaction performing type-approval and NCAP-related research on driver skills for automation. Formally he is Head of Section “Automated Driving” within the department of “Automotive Engineering”.

Dr Joanne Harbluk leads research in the Human Factors and Crash Avoidance Division, Multi-Modal and Road Safety Programs, where she investigates human-vehicle interaction with the goal of improving safety. Current work is focused on the human interaction with automated vehicles both inside and outside the vehicle. She is active in national and international research projects, including EU projects as the Canadian site lead and as a Human Factors advisor, in international collaborative projects supporting the development of ISO standards and in other research projects contributing to the development of guidelines, standards and regulations.

She was a member of several committees supporting the SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving program, including the Technical Coordinating Committee, and she continues her involvement as a member of the Data Oversight Committee for SHRP 2 Data. She is also a member of the coordination committee for the Canadian Naturalistic Driving Study. She is an active member of a number of TRB Committees. Joanne is an adjunct research professor in the Psychology Department at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada, and is an associate member of that university’s Centre for Applied Cognitive Research. She has a Ph.D in Cognitive Psychology and, prior to joining Transport Canada, was an international research fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health in the USA.

Professor Merat is an experimental psychologist and research group leader of the Human Factors and Safety Group, @ITS Leeds. Her main research interests are in understanding the interaction of road users with new technologies. She applies this interest to studying factors such as driver distraction and driver impairment, and she is an expert in studying the human factors implications of highly automated vehicles. She is PI to a number of key UK and European Projects on automated vehicles, in recent years. In the AdaptIVe project, she studied drivers’ ability to resume control from automation in critical situations, investigating how this transition is achieved quickly and safely. For CityMobil2, Professor Merat conducted pioneering work to investigate pedestrians’ perceptions and views of fully automated low speed vehicles, during live demonstrations, work which she is continuing as part of the newly funded H2020 project: InterACT. She is also PI to the recently-funded £15M Innovate UK project HumanDrive, which is considering new ways for ensuring the automated vehicle controllers are more acceptable and pleasant to experience. As the main UK academic partner of L3PILOT, a €68M project funded by the EC, Professor Merat is leading the work on understanding user behaviour and interaction with higher level automated vehicles tested on European roads. Professor Merat is co-chair of the Transportation Research Board sub-committee on Human Factors in Road Vehicle Automation; task leader of a tri-lateral working group on human factors of automation; and advisory board member of Veoneer (a spin-off of Autoliv Inc.), and Zenzic (formerly Meridian Mobility Technology): an initiative set up by the UK Government and industry to accelerate the research and development of CAVs.

Serge van Dam is principal advisor on traffic management for the Dutch national road authority. His main focus is preparing the national road network for the deployment of automated and connected mobility. He is co-chairing the CEDR working group on connecting and automated driving and is highly involved in national and European policy-making.