Managing Human Factors in Automated Vehicle Development: Towards Challenges and Practices

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the automotive industry integrates human factors into agile automated vehicle development, highlighting current practices, challenges, and areas for future research to improve safety and acceptance.

Contribution

It provides qualitative insights into current industry practices and challenges in incorporating human factors into agile AV development, based on interviews with professionals.

Findings

Current approaches for integrating HF knowledge are identified.

Challenges include communication gaps and knowledge transfer issues.

Focus areas for future research are highlighted.

Abstract

Due to the technical complexity and social impact, automated vehicle (AV) development challenges the current state of automotive engineering practice. Research shows that it is important to consider human factors (HF) knowledge when developing AVs to make them safe and accepted. This study explores the current practices and challenges of the automotive industries for incorporating HF requirements during agile AV development. We interviewed ten industry professionals from several Swedish automotive companies, including HF experts and AV engineers. Based on our qualitative analysis of the semi-structured interviews, a number of current approaches for communicating and incorporating HF knowledge into agile AV development and associated challenges are discussed. Our findings may help to focus future research on issues that are critical to effectively incorporate HF knowledge into agile AV development.