At the crossroads of manually controlled and automated transport: The H-Metaphor as a guideline for vehicle automation and interaction

Changes are coming to every element of transport, from the infrastructure, to the vehicles, to the way in which they are operated. New technologies afford an opportunity, and create an obligation, to revisit the basic design. Are we at the crossroads between manually controlled and automated transport? Starting with inspiration and a mental image of the result, design metaphors, like the desktop for PCs, may guide us towards more intuitively understood solutions and blaze new paths between manually controlled and fully automated solutions. This paper sketches a metaphor for highly automated vehicles. After general comments on vehicle automation, the H-Metaphor is introduced. A brief description of its application to human-machine interaction, automation and inter-vehicle interaction follows. Preliminary results of the development and assessment of a simple H-Mode implementation are presented