Intelligent Vehicles and Transportation

As people spend more time in their vehicles, and commuting time to and from work continues to increase as urban populations grow in this age of high-tech, drivers are attempting to perform many more tasks than simply driving their vehicle from point A to point B, which was the case in the 20th Century. The introduction of wireless technology, digital audio/music players, mobile internet access, advanced entertainment/multimedia systems, and smart navigation technologies into the car has placed increased cognitive demands on drivers. Yet, the typical driving test all over the world continues to focus exclusively on the logistics of operating the vehicle itself, and does not include the management of these outside technologies as part of the driver assessment for issuing a license.

Many countries including the US have therefore instituted laws that restrict the use of cell phones and text messaging while operating a vehicle. For instance, large, bright, and illuminated road signs saying "Click it and Ticket it," are posted along the highways in California. USA State Legislative groups and Governors have come together to bring better consistency within the US for laws addressing cell phone use and texting while driving. Restrictions on the use of cell phones while driving have reached worldwide acceptance at various levels.

Driver distractions in the car are many, and have been documented by countless research studies. On the average, drivers attempt to adjust their radio 7.4 times per hour of driving, turn their attention to infants 8.1 times/hour, and are generally searching for something (e.g., sunglasses, coins, etc.) 10.8 times/hour. It is further observed that the average driver looks away from the road 0.06 second every 3.4 seconds, i.e., 64 seconds per hour. Mobile devices with “intense displays” such as the iPod, other smart phones, and tablets require more mental concentration to per-form secondary tasks like searching for songs, pausing, or skipping a song.

While there are some differences of opinion, researchers have noted that any task that requires a driver to divert his/her attention (typically visual) away from the road for more than 1.5 seconds is viewed as a distraction. However, some scholars believe this threshold is around 3.0 seconds. Irrespective of the exact time figure, such a guideline is important as a general rule. But it should be clear that not all drivers are equally skilled, and even advanced/experienced drivers go through pe-riods of fatigue, or they can be unfamiliar with the vehicle they are operating at the time. As a consequence, even for brief periods of time, these could alter their driving abilities and could result costly and fatal accidents.

Workshops

To bring university and idustry researchers together for discussing latest results and trends, we organize workshops on a regular basis (usually every two years). You can find details about past and upcomming workshops here.

The pandemic causes a special problem for us. On the one hand we prefer in-presence meetings. This is these days not that easy. Switching on the other hand to an online version is due to our really multi-national character also not really an option, since we usually have participants from America (both coasts), Europe, and Asia. Due this "customer distribution" it's not really possible to find an approprate time slot on a day for our workshop. For that reason we postponed the next workshop to the post-pandemic time that will start hopefully soon. However, we decided to continue with our book series - even without having a workshop on which our books usually are based.

Books

Up to now several books on the topics of intelligent vehicles and transportation were published in the past. Details about the already appeared books can be found here.