Personalisation and Control Transition Between Automation and Driver in Highly Automated Cars

The goal for the distant future is fully autonomous vehicles, which can handle every possible situation and change the role of the driver to that of a passenger. On the way to that goal, drivers of highly automated cars will still have to take over the control of the vehicle at the boundaries of the operational domain of the automation. However, several studies show that the driver's ability to take over depends on his current status and activities. As for highly automated cars more activities beyond the actual driving task, like reading and writing emails, will be allowed, the driver might need of assistance from the vehicle automation during the control transition phase. Ironically, the fact that higher levels of automation result in decreased driver responsibilities makes considering the driver in the automation algorithms even more essential. Therefore, this chapter discusses how a human-centred control transition can be designed. Another aspect we also want to discuss is how to adapt the driving of highly automated cars to the passengers in the normal full autonomous driving scenario. Hence, we propose a novel concept of a human-centred highly automated car. First, we present an approach for monitoring and interpreting the driver in the interior and a systematic design of a cooperative control transfer. We further point out the crucial aspects of the implementation of such kind of adaption concepts and present results from various driving studies.