Communications of the ACM
Paper on Haptic Steering Support Winner of 2014 Human Factors Prize
Credit: Gizmodo
The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society congratulates Bastiaan Petermeijer, David Abbink, and Joost de Winter on receiving the 2014 Human Factors Prize for their article, "Should Drivers Be Operating Within an Automation-Free Bandwidth? Evaluating Haptic Steering Support Systems With Different Levels of Authority." The authors will be awarded the $10,000 cash prize and publication of their paper in the Society's flagship journal, Human Factors. Petermeijer will present his work at a special session on October 28, 2014, at the HFES International Annual Meeting in Chicago.
The topic for this year's competition is human-automation interaction/autonomy, and articles were invited on human factors/ergonomics research pertaining to effective and satisfying interaction between humans and automation.
The winning paper compares how continuous versus bandwidth haptic steering guidance affects drivers' ability to stay in their lane as well as the overall level of drivers' satisfaction. The authors conducted a study in which participants drove five trials in a simulator with varying levels of haptic support, then evaluated which method was better at preventing errors and improving performance and satisfaction.
"My coauthors and I are absolutely delighted to have won the 2014 Human Factors Prize," Petermeijer says. "Our article investigates the fundamental topic of whether human operators should be supported continuously, or should be seen as satisfiers who need support only when acceptable tolerance limits are exceeded. By discussing the costs and benefits of both approaches, we attempt to promote critical thinking about automation support systems."
Submissions to the competition were judged on the importance of the implications for human-automation interaction/autonomy, originality of the research, contribution to the human factors/ergonomics knowledge base, and soundness of the methodology.
"As automation becomes more prevalent in our society, it is becoming clear that we need to better understand how the person in the system integrates with the automation," says William S. Marras, who chairs the Human Factors Prize Board of Referees. "This work represents an important step forward in this understanding.
Bastiaan Petermeijer is a Ph.D. candidate at the Lehrstuhl für Ergonomie of the Technische Universität München, Germany. His research in the Marie Curie ITN HFauto project investigates human factors in highly automated driving. His Ph.D. will focus on developing and evaluating a haptic interface to mitigate out-of-the-loop issues.
David Abbink is a co-principal investigator on the H-Haptics project and an associate professor at Delft University of Technology, and associate editor for IEEE Transaction on Human-Machine Systems.
Joost de Winter is a tenured assistant professor of Mechanical, Maritime, and Materials Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. He has authored more than 40 journal articles and has secured a prestigious VENI grant, awarded to young scientists in the Netherlands.
No entries found