Alexandros Mouzakitis

Jaguar Land Rover Limited · Research and Technology

Previous research into perceptions of autonomous vehicles has largely focused on a priori attitudes, with little work on the perception of specific traffic situations, context and driving styles. The present study used three simulator experiments (total N = 150) to examine the combined effects of vehicle speed, lane position, information presentati...

Knowledge of drivers’ mobility patterns is useful for enabling context-aware intelligent vehicle functionality, such as route suggestions, cabin preconditioning, and power management for electric vehicles. Such patterns are often described in terms of the Points of Interest (PoIs) visited by an individual. However, existing PoI extraction methods a...

Recent advances in smart connected vehicles and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are based upon the capture and processing of large amounts of sensor data. Modern vehicles contain many internal sensors to monitor a wide range of mechanical and electrical systems and the move to semi-autonomous vehicles adds outward looking sensors such as c...

Predicting what drivers will do as vehicle control is handed over to them from automation is a relatively new challenge for the motor vehicle industry. Operator Event Sequence Diagrams (OESDs) offer a way of modeling the interactions between the driver and vehicle automation in the handover of control. In this paper, two studies are presented in wh...

Driving automation and autonomy are already upon us and the problems that were predicted twenty years ago are beginning to appear. These problems include shortfalls in expected benefits, equipment unreliability, driver skill fade, and error-inducing equipment designs. Designing Interaction and Interfaces for Automated Vehicles: User-Centred Ecologi...

This paper presents the design of a robust distributed state-feedback controller in the discrete-time domain for homogeneous vehicle platoons with undirected topologies, whose dynamics are subjected to external disturbances and under random single packet drop scenario. A linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach is used for devising the control gains...

In this article, an enhanced model reference adaptive control (EMRAC) algorithm is used to design a generic lateral-tracking controller for a vehicle. This EMRAC is different from the EMRAC in the literature as it adopts a $\sigma $ -modification approach to bind the adaptive gain of the switching action. Moreover, an extended Lyapunov theory for...

Behaviour prediction function of an autonomous vehicle predicts the future states of the nearby vehicles based on the current and past observations of the surrounding environment. This helps enhance their awareness of the imminent hazards. However, conventional behavior prediction solutions are applicable in simple driving scenarios that require sh...

Quantifying and encoding occupants' preferences as an objective function for the tactical decision making of autonomous vehicles is a challenging task. This paper presents a low-complexity approach for lane-change initiation and planning to facilitate highly automated driving on freeways. Conditions under which human drivers find different manoeuvr...

It is of great importance to monitor the driver’s status to achieve an intelligent and safe take-over transition in the level 3 automated driving vehicle. We present a camera-based system to recognise the non-driving activities (NDAs) which may lead to different cognitive capabilities for take-over based on a fusion of spatial and temporal informat...

Partially automated vehicles are in actual use, and vehicles with higher levels of automation are under development. Given that highly automated vehicles (AVs) still require drivers’ intervention in certain conditions, effective collaboration between the driver and vehicle seems essential for driving safety. Having a clear understanding about drive...

Semi-autonomous cars are already on the road and highly autonomous cars will soon be with us. Little is understood about how drivers will adapt to the changing relationship with their vehicle, but to ensure safety and consumer acceptance, this insight is vital. To this end, an on-road study in a semi-autonomous vehicle was undertaken with six UK dr...

Behaviour prediction function of an autonomous vehicle predicts the future states of the nearby vehicles based on the current and past observations of the surrounding environment. This helps enhance their awareness of the imminent hazards. However, conventional behaviour prediction solutions are applicable in simple driving scenarios that require s...

Partially automated vehicles present interface design challenges in ensuring the driver remains alert should the vehicle need to hand back control at short notice, but without exposing the driver to cognitive overload. To date, little is known about driver expectations of partial driving automation and whether this affects the information they requ...

Previous research examining trust of autonomous vehicles has largely focused on holistic trust, with little work on evaluation of specific behaviours and interactions with human-controlled vehicles. Six experiments examined the influence of pull-in distance, vehicle perspective (overtaking/being overtaken), following distance and immersion on self-...

The visual demand of finger-touch based interactions with touch screens has been increasingly modelled using Fitts' Law. With respect to driving, these models facilitate the prediction of mean glance duration and total glance time with an index of difficulty based on target size and location. Strong relationships between measures have been found in...

Considering the dramatic growth of traffic, 5G communication technology is proposed to support massive connectivity with a large number of devices. Connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) network is one of the important future applications that can benefit from 5G. Sparse Code Multiple Access (SCMA), as a promising technique in 5G wireless communicati...

The growing sophistication of technologies and sociological advances are major causes for the dramatic change the automotive sector is currently undergoing. To address changes from a human-centered design perspective an improved understanding of the occupants’ emotional experience and behavior is required. Facial-Expression Analysis (FEA) is an eme...

Automated vehicles are increasingly getting mainstreamed and this has pushed development of systems for autonomous manoeuvring (e.g., lane-change, merge, overtake, etc.) to the forefront. A novel framework for situational awareness and trajectory planning to perform autonomous overtaking in high-speed structured environments (e.g., highway, motorwa...

Haptic feedback is used in cars to reduce visual inattention. While tactile feedback like vibration can be influenced by the car's movement, thermal and cutaneous push feedback should be independent of such interference. This paper presents two driving simulator studies investigating novel tactile feedback on the steering wheel for navigation. Firs...

Although drivers gain experience with age, many older drivers are faced with age-related deteriorations that can lead to a higher crash risk. Head-Up Displays (HUDs) have been linked to significant improvements in driving performance for older drivers by tackling issues related to aging. For this study, two Augmented Reality (AR) HUD virtual car na...

Most research into haptic feedback for in-car applications has used vibrotactile feedback. In this article, two simulator studies investigate novel thermal feedback during driving for a lane change task. The distraction and time differences of audio and thermal feedback were investigated in the first, with results showing that thermal feedback does...

A modern vehicle is a complex system of sensors, Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and actuators connected through different types of intra-vehicle networks to control and monitor the state of the vehicle. In addition, modern vehicles are becoming increasingly connected to the outside world through V2X technologies. However, these provide new attack...

Touchscreen Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs) are a well-established and popular choice to provide the primary control interface between driver and vehicle, yet inherently demand some visual attention. Employing a secondary device with the touchscreen may reduce the demand but there is some debate about which device is most suitable, with current man...

An autonomous vehicle (AV) requires an accurate perception of its surrounding environment to operate reliably. The perception system of an AV, which normally employs machine learning (e.g., deep learning), transforms sensory data into semantic information that enables autonomous driving. Object detection is a fundamental function of this perception...

Trust has been shown to play a key role in our ability to safely use autonomous vehicles; hence the authors used the Ideas Café to explore the factors affecting trust in autonomous vehicles. The Ideas Café is an informal collaborative event that brings the public together with domain experts for exploratory research. The authors structured the even...

This study aims to identify preliminary acceptance and usability goals of a Driver State Monitoring (DSM) system. To demonstrate willingness within a user group to employ DSM technology for the task it is designed to support, the acceptance of the system was investigated using Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. Furthermore, a list...

Drawing together the strengths of Ecological Interface Design (EID) and inclusive User Centred Design (UCD), UCEID is a novel Human Factors (HF) method for complex sociotechnical systems. This method ensures user needs are appropriately represented in the constraints based models provided by the Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) framework. The range of...

To ensure transferability of driving simulator-based user trials (where motion sickness onset is likely) it is important to understand if motion sickness affects human performance and therefore user trial data validity. 51 participants had their task performance ability measured in six defined categories (including physical, cognitive, visual and t...

p>Drawing together the strengths of Ecological Interface Design (EID) and inclusive User Centred Design (UCD), UCEID is a novel Human Factors (HF) method for complex sociotechnical systems. This method ensures user needs are appropriately represented in the constraints based models provided by the Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) framework. The range...

In the driving environment, competition exists between Driving Related Activities (DRAs) and Non-Driving Related Activities (NDRAs). This is a source of inattention and human error. Continual proliferation of in-vehicle information systems (IVIS) presents drivers with opportunities for distraction. Drivers simultaneously manage DRAs alongside unrel...

Intelligent transportation systems often identify and make use of locations extracted from GPS trajectories to make informed decisions. However, many of the locations identified by existing systems are false positives, such as those in heavy traffic. Signals from the vehicle, such as speed and seatbelt status, can be used to identify these false po...

With self-driving vehicles being pushed towards the main-stream, there is an increasing motivation towards development of systems that autonomously perform manoeuvres involving combined lateral-longitudinal motion (e.g., lanechange, merge, overtake, etc.). This paper presents a situational awareness and trajectory planning framework for performing...

With increasing automation, occupants of fully autonomous vehicles are likely to be completely disengaged from the driving task. However, even with no driving involved, there are still activities that will require interfaces between the vehicle and passengers. This study evaluated different configurations of screens providing operational-related in...

Mobility, node density and the demand for large volumes of data exchange have aggravated competition for limited resources in the wireless communications environment. This paper proposes a novel MAC scheme called Segmentation MAC (SMAC) which can be used in large-scale Vehicle-to- Everything (V2X) communication networks. SMAC functions to support t...

High levels of Situation Awareness (SA) have been shown to improve performance of an operator in a complex environment. This paper describes an experimental study looking at whether increases in awareness of a non-driving related activity can improve performance in an automotive multitasking condition. 50 participants drove a low-fidelity driving s...

Despite a large literature on autonomous vehicles and a large number of relevant surveys examining public perception of self-driving vehicles, recent studies suggest that reported public perception is rapidly changing, volatile, and highly dependent on context and potential biases in reporting. In addition, some conclusions from very recent studies...

Autonomous driving presents an exciting new development in vehicle technology. It poses a new challenge in driver-automation collaboration particularly during handover transitions between human and machine. In order to deal with this problem, this paper proposes a novel control framework for the haptic takeover system. The high-level framework of t...

Autonomous driving is a topic of extensive research; however user views on this new technology are largely unexplored, especially for an inclusive population. This paper presents a survey and two focus groups, investigating driving habits and attitudes towards autonomous cars of an inclusive group of UK drivers. A subset of survey participants were...

Connected autonomous vehicles are considered as mitigators of issues such as traffic congestion, road safety, inefficient fuel consumption, and pollutant emissions that current road transportation system suffers from. Connected Autonomous vehicles utilises communication systems to enhance the performance of autonomous vehicles and consequently impr...

This paper presents formative research to inform the design of intelligent automotive user interfaces. It describes an evaluation of dialogue-based interfaces, mediating the driver to take back control from the autonomous mode of a car. Four concepts designed to increase driver Situation Awareness were evaluated in a driving simulator. They used di...

In order to design an advanced human-automation collaboration system for highly automated vehicles, research into the driver's neuromuscular dynamics is needed. In this paper a dynamic model of drivers' neuromuscular interaction with a steering wheel is firstly established. The transfer function and the natural frequency of the systems are analyzed...

For an autonomous vehicle to operate safely and effectively, an accurate and robust localisation system is essential. While there are a variety of vehicle localisation techniques in literature, there is a lack of effort in comparing these techniques and identifying their potentials and limitations for autonomous vehicle applications. Hence, this pa...

Trajectory planning and trajectory tracking constitute two important functions of an autonomous overtaking system and a variety of strategies have been proposed in the literature for both functionalities. However, uncertainties in environment perception using the current generation of sensors has resulted in most proposed methods being applicable o...

The automobile is becoming more complex as vehicle technologies advance. As a result, driver awareness of internal and external aspects of the environment will influence performance for a range of activities. Inclusivity is an important aspect of vehicle design, especially as autonomous driving functionality increases. This paper examines how users...

In present-day highly-automated vehicles, there are occasions when the driving system disengages and the human driver is required to take-over. This is of great importance to a vehicle U+02BC s safety and ride comfort. In the U.S state of California, the Autonomous Vehicle Testing Regulations require every manufacturer testing autonomous vehicles o...

The amount of time people spend interacting with in-vehicle technologies depends upon a number of key factors such as personal preference, individual goals and driving demands. Alternative tasks to driving require one to multitask (parallel processing) or frequently switch between tasks (serial processing). Considering this, attentional focus needs...

To drive safely among human drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, autonomous vehicles will need to mimic, or ideally improve upon, humanlike driving. Yet, driving presents us with difficult problems of joint action: 'negotiating' with other users over shared road space. We argue that autonomous driving provides a test case for computational theories o...

Although at present legislation does not allow drivers in a Level 3 autonomous vehicle to engage in a secondary task, there may become a time when it does. Monitoring the behaviour of drivers engaging in various non-driving activities (NDAs) is crucial to decide how well the driver will be able to take over control of the vehicle. One limitation of...

The advent of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles has meant passengers now play a more significant role in the safety and comfort of vehicle journeys. In this paper, we propose a deep learning method to monitor and classify passenger state with camera data. The training of a convolutional neural network is supplemented by data captured from veh...

CARMA (Cloud-Assisted Real-time Methods for Autonomy) is a highly innovative and challenging project which aims to develop and test cooperative automated driving technology, based on a distributed control system. The approach is enabled by an ultra-low latency and highly reliable cloud-based infrastructure accessed through 5G. This paper describes...

Using machine learning techniques, it is possible to learn and subsequently automate certain driver-focused features in consumer vehicles. A human factors approach is taken to review current machine learning systems. Subsequently, it is found that current methods used for machine learning involve long learning times and might not be sufficient to g...

This paper presents a methodology for designing automotive user interfaces using Situation Awareness (SA). The development of interfaces providing users with relevant, timely information is critical for optimal performance. This paper presents a variation on the original SA model allowing for a consideration of all situational factors in a modern m...

The study at hand evaluates if and how perception of haptic pulse feedback provided by an accelerator pedal in a stationary car differs dependent on the shoe type (herein safety boots and plimsolls) or the age and gender of the participant. Intermediate results indicate that the shoe type and age do not have a significant influence on the haptic pe...

In order to remain competitive, automotive companies use advanced simulation methods to assist in product development. Hardware in the loop (HIL) simulation is one such technique. To use HIL in the development of automotive electronic control units (ECU), accurate simulation models of the ECU's sensors and actuators are needed. In this work, a full...

Complexity of electronics and embedded software systems in automobiles has been increasing over the years. This necessitates the need for an effective and exhaustive development and validation process in order to deliver fault free vehicles at reduced time to market. Model-based Product Engineering (MBPE) is a new process for development and valida...

Interest in fault diagnosis of systems has grown significantly in recent years as modern control systems are becoming more complex and control algorithms more sophisticated. Research and development engineers very often face the challenge to find out what fault diagnosis methods exist and what are their main benefits. Classification of fault diagno...

Testing real-time vehicular systems challenges the tester to design test cases for concurrent and sequential input events, emulating unexpected user and usage profiles. The vehicle response should be robust to unexpected user actions. Sequence Covering Arrays (SCA) offer an approach which can emulate such unexpected user actions by generating an op...