How Will the Driver Sit in an Automated Vehicle? – The Qualitative and Quantitative Descriptions of Non-Driving Postures (NDPs) When Non-Driving-Related-Tasks (NDRTs) Are Conducted

Highly-automated driving (HAD) is currently one of the most discussed innovative topics and likely to become a series product within the next few decades [1]. From the level-3 automation (SAE) on, the driver does not have to constantly monitor the vehicle while driving [2], this enables the driver to carry out different activities and be out of the control loop. By conducting the non-driving related tasks (NDRT) like eating, texting, talking, relaxing and so on [3], the driver may take other sitting positions – defined as ‘non-driving postures (NDPs)’ – rather than the driving position. In this work, an online survey (n = 122) and an experiment (n = 16) were conducted, which found out that there are 13 activities which would be conducted by significantly (α = 0.05) more drivers in HAD, compared with the manual driving. Four basic NDPs are mapped (many-to-many) to the NDRTs. In the experiment, 10 NDPs of each participant are measured, where the descriptive statistics of torso, thigh and knee angles offer a quantitative description of NDPs. Based on the results, 30 new requirements for the interior of automated vehicles are derived.