The TU-Automotive Europe 2018 conference that took place in Munich on the 30 October 2018 was an excellent opportunity for AUTOPILOT to raise awareness on the importance of user acceptance in the development new technologies.
The FIA Programmes Director, Olivier Lenz, participated at the event presenting the preliminary results of the user acceptance evaluation work that AUTOPILOT is being carrying out. FIA is one of the 45 project partners which oversees the user acceptance component of the project.
In its endeavour to develop an interoperable, standardised, secure, and open-access IoT platform enabling safer automated driving, the AUTOPILOT project is collecting feedback from the users of the developed services. The core of the user acceptance evaluation will be data collected from individual users via questionnaires, tailored to each pilot site and use case. In addition, focus groups will allow for in-depth discussion of the use cases and questionnaires for professional drivers will provide a more technical perspective on the test runs.
Overall, the vast majority of the respondents evaluated the service described in the survey as a positive experience, which was exciting, safe and easy to use. Moreover, the evaluation shows that most of the users would be willing to use car sharing over renting a car or using a tourist bus in the city, paying, though, special attention to security and privacy of their data in the utilisation of IoT automated driving services.
Olivier Lenz insisted on the importance of getting a fair level-playing field for the providers of connected services to develop innovative concepts based on a fair access to relevant data and to provide a maximum of added value to mobile consumers, to ensure a supportive economic framework as indispensable condition for a successful development of connected mobility.
During the conference, some innovative start-ups in the connected car, mobility, autonomous vehicles space took the stage for a pitch off, with a panel of expert judges scoring them on their pitching skills, product viability and innovation. Keynote presentations and panels featuring BMW, Ṥkoda, and Renault who shared insights on current product developments, projects and partnerships.
