Control the Autonomous! - User Interfaces for Monitoring and Dispatching Autonomous Vehicles

The ongoing development of autonomous vehicles offers many opportunities in the field of local public transport, but also makes the monitoring of autonomously driving buses by a control center necessary. It should be noted that there are many different manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. Each manufacturer develops its own individual systems, for example to monitor and control its own manufactured vehicles respective products. Operators and users or dispatchers of vehicles are interested in general tools, such as institutions for public transportation. This paper deals with the development and design of a control interface that enables an operator to monitor moving buses, to handle occurring malfunctions and to answer communication requests from passengers. It doesn't matter which manufacturer systems are present. The analysis of user groups in the form of described personas and the investigation of possible scenarios made it possible to draw conclusions regarding the required functions of such an interface. The resulting concept is subsequently presented decisions made during the development are substantiated. However, bus drivers are critical for conveying passengers with a sense of security and for information sharing. In this paper we also aim to make more steps towards answering the difficult question of how the social role of the vehicle driver can be replaced by user interfaces and a connection between passengers and operators.