Human Factors in the Coming Age of Driverless Vehicle
To err is human. Human errors have caused numerous casualties and losses in the world
of transportation. For example, drowsy drivers caused 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries,
and $12.5 billion losses each year.
Technologies, especially the driverless vehicles, is a gospel to drivers with low
vision, and to every one of us so that we can get to our destination on time while
sleeping, eating, texting, and calling.
However, what if there is a technology failure when the driverless vehicle is running
on the highway? In this life-critical event, the human factors need to take in control.
When a control turn-over is required, the vehicles need to know whether drivers are
in a state to control. Thus, technologies to sense human states are important, for
example, distraction detection and fatigue detection.
We have developed and patented several fatigue detection systems using a smartphone,
Google Glass or a Bluetooth headset (He et al., 2015; He et al., 2017). The system
can alert drivers if it detects drowsy indicators, such as frequent and long eye blinks.
A safer world for transportation needs the united efforts of Engineers, Computer
Scientists and Human Factors experts to combine the strengths of both human and technology.