Interconnected Driving

Collaborative Project

When your car calls your home and tells it to turn on the heat, when several cars communicate with each other to give notice of traffic jams or road conditions, and when the driver can use voice entry to book a hotel room, then one could say that driving became interconnected driving.

In the collaborative project about man-machine interaction in interconnected driving, usability, safety and acceptance of such  applications are in the focus of attention. The goal of the project is to take the drivers perspective into consideration at all times during design, development and marketing.

New technologies in mobile communication and the increased tendency to use electronic systems  in automobiles open up new possibilities for communication services, security measures and assistance systems. The application of these functions and systems is supposed to be used as a means of making traveling by car safer and more comfortable

The project actually doesn’t care as much for technical infrastructure as it is concerned with the issues of usability, safety and acceptance of such applications. The term “Interconnected driving” refers to any interaction between the vehicle and other persons, institutions or traffic participants.

How many and what kind of operation requirements can the driver face without posing a threat to traffic safety ? What applications actually fulfill a real need of private or professional drivers ?  What accounting methods  are fitting and acceptable for personal vehicles or vehicle fleets ?

The collaborators of this project – HFC, the Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Technology Berlin - are working relentlessly on answering these questions.

The project started with a requirement- and demand analysis. Afterwards, in the framework of a parallel-iterative development approach, development methods were extended in a way that allows integration of the needs of not only the drivers, but other stakeholders as well, like automobile manufacturers, suppliers, mobile service providers and others. Using simulators, studies were conducted to test general operating concepts for interconnected applications. Following the project there will be a field study that tests a pilot application in cooperation with MSPs.

The project was accompanied by a group of experts from the automotive and mobile communications sectors.

The project ran from 2005 to 2007 and was sponsored by the Investmentbank Berlin IBB within the scope of the promotion program “Pro FIT”, which was co-financed by the EU.

The funds originated in the European fund for regional development ( EFRE).