Chapter eleven - Intelligent haptic interface design for human–machine interaction in automated vehicles

Abstract

Prior to realizing fully autonomous driving, human intervention is periodically required to guarantee vehicle safety. This poses a new challenge in human–machine interaction, particularly during the control authority transition from automated functionality to a human driver. This study addresses this challenge by proposing an intelligent haptic interface based on a newly developed two-phase human–machine interaction model. The intelligent haptic torque is applied to the steering wheel and switches its functionality between predictive guidance and haptic assistance according to the varying state and control ability of human drivers. This helps drivers gradually resume manual control during take-over. The developed approach was validated by conducting vehicle experiments with 26 participants. The results suggest that the proposed method can effectively enhance the driving state recovery and control performance of human drivers during take-over compared with an existing approach. Thus this new method further improves the safety and smoothness of the human–machine interaction in automated vehicles.