Human-Centred Future Mobility Innovation - New horizons for optimised Human Behaviour in Autonomous, Connected, Electrified, and Shared vehicle

The Autonomous, Connected, Electrified, and Shared (ACES) mobility revolution will change the driving environment creating fundamental differences resulting from emerging technologies. This change may make it challenging for the end-users to adopt because of uncertainty of the unknown, particularly where safety is a risk factor. Therefore, what defines "the vehicle" is being challenged. Imagine the difference between a privately owned human-driven, combustion engine vehicle with no connectivity to the internet, versus a shared vehicle with high levels of automation, electric powertrain and 5G connectivity. The anticipated benefits of future mobility technology may not be fully realised while we lack understanding of how these changes impact usability and change the vehicle experience.

The change in both the underlying technology used and therefore the end-user perception is vast. This will drive increased levels of perceived risk and uncertainty for those who might like the relatively stable and inert vehicles that exist today. For example:

Autonomy - incrementally lessens driver engagement bringing reducing levels of driving-related responsibility and potentially more freedom to perform alternative activities. Electrification - changes how a car is driven, with driving style and ownership habits that are different to the incumbent ICE technology.
Connectivity - challenges attention and distraction in low levels of automation but increased productivity in high levels of automation.
Shared - mobility changes the expectation of accessibility, ownership, familiarity, and perceived comfort within a vehicle.

Combining all four into an ACES car equates to a paradigm shift. While the technology underpinning these innovations is under rapid growth, the user-technology experience, and understanding how human behaviour in-vehicle changes within ACES, is not receiving adequate focus and therefore how driver behaviour will change naturalistically, influencing interaction inside and outside of the vehicle, is not well understood.

This project is business-led innovation that will investigate human behaviour and identify innovation and technology solutions to increase end-user acceptance, satisfaction and value. The target will be creating product novelty that results in societal benefits like safety and convenience as well as adding value to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and the UK innovation ecosystem. Initially, this project will define key challenges associated with human behaviour in near-future vehicles in order to invent and commercialise new technology solutions. This will include psychology, physiology, and human factors while focusing on perceptual, cognitive and physical demand as well as comfort, motion sickness, trust and productivity (particularly for automated vehicles) and their influence on end-user experience. The research will empathise, create ideas, collect, analyse, and interpret data, to turn findings into engineering requirements and new technology to guide future vehicle innovation. Collaboration with some of the world's greatest technical universities who will provide academic support, mentoring and strategic direction to make sure the latest cutting edge scientific approaches are used. Taking a user centred and data driven approach to designing ACES vehicles will result in societal benefits such as safety and convenience as well as adding value to Jaguar Land Rover and the wider UK society.

This project will generate impact at a number of key levels. Firstly, at the individual level, it will help to develop Mr. Lee Skrypchuk as a future business leader and figurehead in the area of Human-Centred Future Mobility Innovation within Jaguar Land Rover. This will provide Mr Skrypchuk with a platform to showcase to the delivery of a large scale project with wide-reaching impact. Additionally, it will initially benefit a small team of people and become a blueprint for success in mobility innovation. This will help showcase the multidisciplinary approach needed and become a template that other teams to follow, linking basic science, data-driven, human-centred approach and embedding into a product development cycle. The cross-disciplinary nature of the work will require a challenging, engaging, and innovative work environment and the creation of a multidisciplinary team.

At the business level, the centre of excellence and capability to empower JLR as a technical innovator in the field of understanding of human behaviour in-vehicle. JLR has a proud history of design and innovation but needs to find new ways to evolve and succeed during this period of unprecedented change. The creation of engaging and transparent customer experiences will be key to our continued success. This will lead to a wealth of novel, valuable intellectual property, ensuring JLR competitiveness in market hotly contested by technology-savvy new and old competitors.

This project will impact elements of the product development cycle within JLR. Many of the traditional engineering-based disciplines do not account for end-user experience in sufficient detail so focus is necessary to keep pace with the enabling technology. There is a risk that the technology will fail to meet user needs if not carefully deployed or evaluated so as to consider the wide variety of user-product situations. Therefore, alongside the impact of technology deployed on JLR vehicles there will be impact on the processes within JLR to develop and manufacture technology.

There will be academic impact for the project by collaborating with some of the most established global universities working in this area. This means the best scientific knowledge and practice will be available to support, but also that the learning the project generates can be disseminated within the universities and used for teaching & research purposes to help the next generation of students. This will impact the collaborating universities but also through publication in relevant peer-reviewed journals such Transportation Research and presenting at international conferences such as Automotive User Interfaces, SAE World Congress and Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.

At the international level, it would put the UK in a competitive position of Human-Centred Future Mobility Innovation through data driven innovation and technology deployment establishing the UK as one of the world leaders in this area. It will also address the skills gap, and promote the cross-disciplinary nature of the work and the subsequent training necessary to support the growth of this area within industry. This would help to attract, train, and retain the best talent to the UK and also to JLR. This may also provide a mechanism for informing or improving national or international standards as it will generate data to support the deployment of these changes. This project will give focus to solving problems in an applied project that goes from basic principles through to market deployment.