Tutorial I: Car robotics — Self-driving cars and human factor

Summary form only given. Verification test for the practical application of robot car is about to begin now in many countries. Nevada in the United States amended the laws/regulations on public roads March 2012, and approved testing of autonomous vehicles. The Nevada department of motor vehicles, delivered a statement that “These regulations establish requirements companies must meet to test their vehicles on Nevada's public roadways as well as requirements for residents to legally operate them in the future.”. Can we expect increase of the road safety with self-driving cars? Who will take responsibility for what happened if a road accident occurs? The answers to such questions must be provided before the popularization of autonomous vehicles. The problems around self-driving cars, such as “co-operation of machine control to driver's operation”, “safety on roads” and “reliability of automation technologies in self-driving cars”, should be solved. Therefore, the relationship between human driver, or responsible person of driving, and automatic operation is the key point. In this tutorial, the current situation and challenges on driving ability of human, assistive technology for human-driving, and automatic operation technology in self-driving will be explained.