Designing a human vehicle interface for an intelligent community vehicle

This paper describes the design of a human vehicle interface (HVI) for an autonomous road vehicle. It presents ongoing research work in the Intelligent Vehicle Laboratory of NTU. It includes the research works of fellow researchers to illustrate the integration of the vehicle physical systems to the human interface. The experimental vehicle platform is an electric vehicle with an on-board computer. The sensory suite of the vehicle includes modular active stereo eyes for road tracking and vehicle following, ultrasonic sensors for near field obstacles detection and GPS receivers for vehicle localization and tracking. The interactive components are motion control module for driving and communications module for tele-operation or operator assistance. The fusion of sensors and other vehicle components, representation of information and the human-task-vehicle interaction concept are discussed with consideration to ergonomics and safety.