Defining A Design Space of The Auto-Mobile Office: A Computational Abstraction Hierarchy Analysis

Abstract

One advantage of highly automated vehicles is drivers can use commute time for non-driving tasks, such as work-related tasks. The potential for an auto-mobile office—a space where drivers work in automated vehicles—is a complex yet underexplored idea. This paper begins to define a design space of the auto- mobile office in SAE Level 3 automated vehicles by integrating the affinity diagram (AD) with a computational representation of the abstraction hierarchy (AH). The AD uses a bottom-up approach where researchers starting with individual findings aggregate and abstract those into higher-level concepts. The AH uses a top-down approach where researchers start with first principles to identify means-ends links between system goals and concrete forms of the system. Using the programming language R, the means-ends links of AH can be explored statistically. This computational approach to the AH provides a systematic means to define the design space of the auto-mobile office.