Affective Use Cases for Empathic Vehicles in Highly Automated Driving: Results of an Expert Workshop

Improving user experience of highly automated vehicles is crucial for increasing their acceptance. One possibility to realize this is the design of empathic vehicles that are capable of assessing the emotional state of vehicle occupants and react to it accordingly by providing tailored support. At the moment, the central challenge is to derive relevant use cases as basis for the design of future empathic vehicles. We report the results of a workshop that brought together researchers and practitioners interested in affective computing, affective interfaces and automated driving as forum for the development of a roadmap towards empathic vehicles using design thinking methods. During the workshop, experts from the field identified relevant affective use cases for three different scenarios in terms of use themes in fully automated vehicles (SAE level 5). These affective use cases are discussed for empathic automated vehicles thereby providing a roadmap of future research and applied issues of designing user-centered empathic vehicles for future mobility.