1 Introduction
Despite massive investments in autonomous driving with certain technological progress, fully autonomous driving (SAE level 5 [23]) does not seem achievable in the foreseeable future. Hence, until the introduction of robust level-5 driving, autonomous vehicles (AVs) will require human supervision and direct intervention in certain situations (SAE level 4), as required by law in some countries. However, one-on-one supervision—no matter if in the car or remotely—is costly and might hinder the broad application of the technology. Hence, it is relevant to study scenarios where one supervisor can monitor multiple vehicles at once and, if needed, takes over one vehicle to teleoperate it. In fact, this is one mode of operation in industrial use today in Germany. Still, monitoring of the remaining vehicles needs to be continued in these situations. Challenges arise from providing interfaces for a control station that support—although going along with quite different requirements— both monitoring and teleoperation tasks alike. On the one hand, remote monitoring involves tasks like regularly inspecting fuel status, the current location of the AVs, network connection status, etc. On the other hand, teleoperation requires having a cockpit setup available remotely.
e.g., in Germany through the “Federal Act Amending the Road Traffic Act and the Compulsory Insurance Act” and the “Ordinance on the Approval and Operation of Motor Vehicles with Autonomous Driving Functions in Specified Operating Areas – Autonomous Vehicles Approval and Operation Ordinance (AFGBV)”