Development of an Integrated HMI-concept for Active Safety Systems

Abstract: Today, in the 21st century, progressively more, computing and communication-basedtechnologies are being implemented in cars and the complexity of the driver-vehicleinterface increases. The consumers are more sophisticated and expecting more contentin their car with higher levels of quality. They demand features that are smarter, bettercrafted and easier to use. They expect their vehicle to be safe. To increase safetyvehicles today will take action to prevent accidents, instead of making theconsequences of a possible accident as small as possible.

Safety is the guiding principle for Volvo Car Corporation, preventing accidents;through active safety systems are among other, important research areas today. Thenumbers of such systems will most likely increase radically over the coming years asthey are seen as very important to stay competitive. So far every system has beendeveloped as stand alone functions, which if this continues, will lead to unnecessarilycomplex driver environments. The problem addressed in this thesis, is therefore howto find a holistic Human Machine Interface (HMI), which gives the driver a clearoverview and good understanding of the active safety systems. To satisfy moredemanding customers, system personalization also needs to be considered as well asits interactivity and flexibility.

To meet these goals and to be able to from a user-centered approach develop a designsolution we had to through literature study find out; which theories to use to be able tounderstand driver behaviour and how that influences safety in driving, and whatinfluences the driver in the context of driving. Further we needed to find out whichdemands there are for HMI in cars, to be able to design for safe interaction andusability. To understand driver behaviours and their relation to in-vehicle systems, wecarried out semi structured interviews and questionnaires. The results concerning thedrivers’ relation to in-vehicle systems show that most of the drivers do not personallyadjust the systems in the car, more than very occasionally, at the same time themajority would like the opportunity to do so for the feeling of control.

The result we gained from the study were interpreted and specified into userrequirements. These requirements together with our literature background and acompetitor analysis were the base to development of two simple prototypes. Theseprototypes were evaluated with the users, to ensure that the requirements in thecontext of driving were fulfilled. The results from the evaluation were used to furtherevolve our design into a final interactive design solution.

The conclusions of our study is summarized in statements describing how anintegrated and flexible HMI, for active safety systems, together with an intuitiveinteraction could be designed to meet the consumers and the markets increasingdemands of today.