The future of Remote Operations for Autonomous Vehicles : Exploring Human-Automation Teamwork and Situational Awareness for SAE Level 4 trucks

Sammanfattning: The level of autonomation and the number situations which an autonomous vehicle can handle continuously increases. However, even fully autonomous vehicles will need human support, especially when system failures occur. Remote operations enables vehicles to operate autonomously when possible and keeps the human in the loop to assist when needed by allocating them to a remote operating center (ROC). It is a new field within autonomous trucks and little research has thus been conducted on the topic. By taking an approach from the fields of aviation and maritime, where remote operations has been researched for longer, the study aims to transfer knowledge to road freight and to enable remote operations at a management mode. The focus of the study is thus to investigate which information is important for the remote operator (RO) when manual procedures are automated, and to define recommendations for how a ROC could be designed from a human-automation teamwork and situational awareness perspective. The results of the conducted interviews find that the RO first and foremost needs information regarding failures of the automation, including how the failures could be solved. However, it also confirms previous research emphasizing interactive interfaces to avoid passive monitoring, as that is likely to cause an out-of-the-loop problem. Furthermore, recommendations which could be defined regarding the design of a ROC include incorporating both verbal and digital communicational abilities, and the possibility to collaborate, both internally and externally. Lastly, the results show an importance to differentiate between different modes of remote operations in the ROC to remain clear of the responsible actor and avoiding automation surprise.