Should Conditional Self-Driving Cars Consider the State of the Human Inside the Vehicle?

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles with conditional automation are said to be the next step in the development of self-driving cars. The human driver still performs a critical role in them, by taking over the control of the vehicle if prompted. As the technology is still facing pending challenges, the human drivers are also required to be able to detect and react in case of Autonomous Drive System (ADS) malfunctions. Within this context, in this work we argue that to assure safety during autonomous operation the user state should be measured all the time, which is intended to support a "fallback ready state". From an in-depth literature review, this article identifies the human factors involved in the aforementioned "fallback ready state"that affect the personalization of human-vehicle interaction.