Plenary Lecture
Interactive Driving Simulators – Modern Tools for Training and Research and Development in the Area of the Human–Machine Interaction (HMI) in Transport
Professor Petr Bouchner
Head of Department of Vehicles at Faculty of Transportation Sciences
Driving Simulation Research Group
Czech Technical University in Prague
Czech Republic
E-mail: bouchner@lss.fd.cvut.cz
Abstract: From a very beginning of history of modern transport it has been necessary to solve problems of safety and reliability of transporting vehicles and its operation. The source of failures have significantly changed during time. As the vehicles and their control systems in early phases of their evolution were generally unreliable and most of the focus had to be set on solving technical and technological problems - meanwhile the problem of the human operator himself was mainly narrowed to learning how to operate the vehicle and manipulate properly its control systems – in second half of 20’s century the situation started to turn around. With the sophisticated design, construction and production technologies, it started to be seen that the focus has to be set to the human operator and HMI as the weakest part of this system. This covers not only perfect training in operation but also deep understanding of links and functions of a complex system of HMI and interfaces between them. Problems of reliability and safety of interaction between the human operator (driver) and him/her controlled artificial system (machine, vehicle) become crucial for transport safety.
The presentation shows and explains main principles of the research tools – the advanced interactive vehicle simulators, which are continuously being developed by the Driving Simulation Research Group at Czech Tech Univ. It encompasses passenger cars, two-wheelers, trucks, rail engines and others. This field of R&D deals with simulation technology but also scenario and experiment design and mainly measuring tools and methods, which could extract useful knowledge from measured data. An indisputable role in this area is played by so called psychophysiological measures. The lecture introduces problems of the HMI research field as well as problems of user interfaces in systemic point of view. Beside those general approaches, the lecture introduces in more detail main research focus of our institute - ergonomics and human factors in vehicle control. The lecture is based on results and examples from 15 years of research effort in this area that will be shown in pictures and videos.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Academic career: 2003 - Master Degree at CTU Prague (Faculty of Electro-engineering), specialization in computer engineering, 2007 - Doctoral Degree at CTU Prague (Faculty of Transportation Sciences) “Driving simulators for HIM research”, 2011 degree of associate prof. (doc.) at CTU Prague. Since 2003 researcher and university teacher, since 2007 Head of Driving Simulation Research Group, since 2008 deputy head of Laboratory of Systems Reliability of FTS,CTU and Institute of Informatics of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, since 2011 head of Department of Vehicles at FTS CTU in Prague, since 2013 member of the faculty Scientific Board.
Scientific activities: research activities in interactive and driving simulator construction and development, HMI in vehicles, human factors in transportation, measurements and analysis of complex data, implementation of virtual reality tools into the experiments, design of experiments and their analysis, member of editorial board of scientific journal Neural Network World and scientific journal Advances in Transportation Studies.
Author and coauthor of several tens of papers, chapters in journals, book chapters, books, research report on interactive simulators, human factors in transportation, ergonomics, driver’s attention and fatigue. Member of expert groups of PIARC, ESoP by European Committee, Czech National Committee for Norms, member of Czech Board for Cosmic Technologies. Main solver (responsible) of several national scientific and applied research projects (grants).