FW-HTF: Collaborative Research: The Next Mobile Office: Safe and Productive Work in Automated Vehicles

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The Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier (FW-HTF) is one of 10 new Big Ideas for Future Investment announced by NSF. The FW-HTF cross-directorate program aims to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the changing landscape of jobs and work by supporting convergent research. This award fulfills part of that aim, by examining whether and how a new technology can safely improve worker productivity, and well-being. Current trends in the automobile industry make cars increasingly automated, allowing them to take on a growing number of driving tasks, while freeing the driver to engage in other activities. Millions of people spend nearly an hour of each work day commuting by car. Automated vehicles could allow part of the time currently spent driving to be used for work-related efforts. The goal of this project is to understand how current and future technologies might enable work to be done in automated vehicles. Reclaiming productive time from time currently taken up by driving could increase economic productivity, worker wellbeing, and firm profitability. The project focuses on understanding how technology can allow commuters to safely combine or switch between work and driving tasks. A new multi-interface in-vehicle environment for the support of work-related tasks, as well as safe driving, in automated vehicles will be developed and tested in driving simulators and real vehicles. The innovative contributions to the in-vehicle use of speech and spoken interactions, augmented reality, and tangible user interfaces will have applicability to a broad range of settings, including for non-drivers and in mobile environments beyond the car. The project also includes activities to promote the participation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Creating the systems that will allow drivers to safely engage in work-related activities in automated vehicles requires an interdisciplinary effort. This project will explore what types of work in automated vehicles can improve workers' job satisfaction and productivity, and the productivity and profitability of firms. Based on these findings, the team will create in-vehicle user interfaces that support work tasks, as well as safe transitions between engaging in work tasks and in driving. Three types of user interfaces will be integrated: voice interfaces, augmented reality interfaces, and tangible interfaces. The team will also develop a probabilistic model to examine the ability of the in-vehicle interfaces to communicate to the driver the mode and limitations of the vehicle automation. The model will incorporate cases when the user transitions between the work task and the driving task. This will allow designing the interfaces such that they provide adequate support for the safe transition from the work task to the driving task, as well as an efficient transition back to the work task. The team will close the loop with design guidelines, by providing researchers, practitioners, and policy makers a broad set of guidelines, along with careful reasoning for their application in the design of human-machine interaction to support the work-related tasks of workers in automated vehicles.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.