Editorial Advances of Human Factors Research for Future

Hindawi Publishing CorporationInternational Journal of Vehicular TechnologyVolume 2013, Article ID 749089, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/749089

EditorialAdvances of Human Factors Research for FutureVehicular Technology

Motoyuki Akamatsu,1 Paul Green,2 and Klaus Bengler3

1 Human Technology Research Institute, AIST, Japan2University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), USA3 Institute of Ergonomics, Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany

Correspondence should be addressed to Motoyuki Akamatsu; [email protected]

Received 20 August 2013; Accepted 20 August 2013

Copyright © 2013 Motoyuki Akamatsu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons AttributionLicense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

Although automotive human factors research began after theWorld War II, vehicular technology has developed to adaptthe vehicle to the human operator and the requirements oftraffic since its inception, with the initial focus being onease of operation of the steering wheel and brake pedal andmethods to provide adequate road illumination at night. Formany decades, human factors research mainly concernedmaking the primary driving tasks (controlling a vehicle andobeying signs and signals) easy to do, providing adequatespace for the driver and passengers, mitigating crash injuries,and making secondary controls and displays inside thevehicle easy to use.

With the introduction of advanced driver assistance sys-tems and driver information systems in 1980s, there havebeen a marked increase in the number of studies of drivermental workload as well as more general, quantitative studiesof driver behavior, both on real roads and in driving simu-lators to help design and evaluate those systems. That line ofhuman factors research will continue as vehicle automationand driver information increases. Another line of researchconcerns driver distraction, with a special concern beingthe use of mobile devices such as cellular phones. Theimplementation of driver assistance and information systemshas resulted in a shift in automotive human factors research.

Methods for the automotive human factors researchhave been mostly transferred from psychology and cognitivescience, physiology, statistics, and various engineering disci-plines. But, as vehicular technology continues to evolve, new

methods and theories are needed to address those issues andthe human aspects of the vehicular technology so vehicles willbe safe, easy to use, and useful.

The aim of the special issue is to collect research activitiespertaining to human factors issue in the advanced driverassistance systems and driver information systems and todevelop new methods for future automotive human factorsissues.

The review article “Automotive technology and human fac-tors research: past, present, and future” describes the historyof automotive human factors research since the inception ofmotor vehicles until now. This article covers not only theresearch topics examined but also the industrial standardsdeveloped as a result of that research, themajor organizationsthat research and conferences established at which it waspresented, the major news stories affecting vehicle safety, andthe general social context. It also identifies the issues to beaddressed in the future.

We have two articles regarding the interface design ofdriver information systems. “Development and evaluation ofautomotive speech interfaces: useful information from thehuman factors and the related literature” by V. E. W. Lo,and P. A. Green provides a comprehensive literature reviewof the topic, summarizing much of what has been done intables. Speech interfaces, though not commonly used now,have the potential of being less distracting to the driverthan the visual-manual interfaces. The review article givesthe background information such as key speech interfaces

2 International Journal of Vehicular Technology

(both demonstrations and products), relevant technologystandards and guidelines, and assessment methods for futuredevelopment. “Evaluation of a navigation radio using thethink-aloudmethod” by P. A. Green and J.-S. Park is a researcharticle that describes how problems associated with a prepro-duction speech interface of a driver information system wereidentified using the think-aloud method commonly appliedfor usability testing. In addition to providing an extensive listof problems (common to many speech interfaces) as well astheir frequency and severity, this article provides suggestionsas to how the think-aloud method can be improved in thiscontext so data can be collected and analyzedmore quickly ata lower cost.

We have two research articles for assessing driver’s capa-bility of the driving task based on driving performance. “Ana-lysis of temporal relationships between eye-gaze and periph-eral vehicle behavior for detecting driver distraction” by T.Hirayama et al. gives a new measure to assess the driverdistraction. They focused on the gaze behavior towards theperipheral vehicles and see how it changes depending onthe level of distraction. “A neurofuzzy approach to modelinglongitudinal driving behavior and driving task complexity” byR. G. Hoogendoorn, et al. focuses on the performance ofthe longitudinal driving task and how it changes dependingon the driving task complexity, based on the theoreticalframework of Task-Capability-Interface model that goes wellbeyond the classical Gazis-Herman-Rothery and IntelligentDriver models in the literature. They developed a mathemat-ical model that can be used to assess the driver capability.

Overtrust and overreliance are key concerns when intro-ducing advanced driver assistance systems but they are notclearly understood. “Human’s overtrust in and overreliance onadvanced driver assistance systems: a theoretical framework”by T. Inagaki and M. Itoh gives a two-aspect frameworkfor the system (system diagnosis, action selection). Systemdiagnosis is used to determine overtrust and has threecharacteristics (dimension of trust, target object, and chancesfor observation). The second aspect is used to determineoverreliance and has three characteristics (type of actionselected, benefits expected, and time allowance for interven-tion). Numerous examples of how these ideas can be appliedto design real systems are given.

We have two research articles where the authors aredevelopingmethods for the human factors research. “Predict-ing driver behavior using field experiment data and drivingsimulator experiment data: assessing impact of elimination ofstop regulation at railway crossings” by T. Sato et al. showedhow the combined use of a naturalistic driving experimentand a driving simulator experiment can predict how driversbrake and where they stop if stop signs are removed fromrailway crossings. Of particular concern was the situationwhere vehicles ahead stop and the driver is trapped in thecrossing and possibly killed by an oncoming train. “The frontseat passenger: how to transfer qualitative findings into design”by S. Osswald et al. describes how qualitative methods can beused to identify ideas for new vehicle design, methods thatcontrast with traditional, quantitative methods used to testhypotheses using statistics.

“A comparative analysis of subjective quality of the mobil-ity between new portable electric transportation mode andwalking” by H. Ohta et al. is a research article concerning aSegway-type personal mobile vehicle. They investigated thesubjective quality of mobility related to the use of this type ofvehicle in different situations, to determine when it would beused and when people would prefer to walk or drive a car.

The variety of topics and methods described is indicativeof the current state of the automotive human factors litera-ture. For next generation motor vehicles and vehicle systemsto be developed in a timely and cost-effective manner thatcustomers will find useful, easy to use, and safe, efforts to (1)develop new methods, (2) collect and summarize the liter-ature, (3) develop standards, guidelines, and recommendedpractices, and (4) evaluate prototype product designs mustoccur in parallel with human-centered design.

Motoyuki AkamatsuPaul Green

Klaus Bengler

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Editorial Advances of Human Factors Research for Future