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The Manufacturing Message Specification is an application layer Standard designed to support messaging communications to and from programmable devices in a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) environment. This environment is referred to in this Standard as the manufacturing environment. This Standard does not specify a complete set of services for remote programming of devices, although provision of such a set of services may be the subject of future standardization efforts.

Alyson Lyon, Executive Leadership Coach, explains what stress is, and how to handle personally and professionally. SAE Members can view the full version by logging into the Member Connection. Not a Member? Join us today at sae.org/join.

Abstract Sleep quality and maintenance of the optimal cognitive functioning is of crucial importance for aviation safety. Fatigue Risk Management (FRM) enables the operator to achieve the objectives set in their safety and FRM policies. As in any other risk management cycle, the FRM value can be realized by deploying suitable tools that aid robust decision-making. For the purposes of our article, we focus on fatigue hazard identification to explore the possible developments forward through the enhancement of objective tools in air transport operators. To this end we compare subjective and objective tools that could be employed by an FRM system. Specifically, we focus on an exploratory survey on 120 pilots and the analysis of 250 fatigue reports that are compared with objective fatigue assessment based on the polysomnographic (PSG) and neurocognitive assessment of three experimental cases.

Abstract The ability of senior citizens as well as other members of the general population to engage in an effective manner with technology is of increasing importance as new and innovative technologies become available. While recognizing the challenges that technologies can have on different populations, the ability to interact successfully with new technologies will, for seniors, have important consequences that can affect their quality of life and those of their families in numerous and important ways. This study, building upon previous research, examines the major dimensions of decision-making regarding attitudes toward autonomous vehicle technologies (ATVs) and their use. The study utilized data from a study of senior citizens in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area and compared the results with a sample of graduate students from a local university.

This study reanalyzes the data from a recent experimental report from the University of Utah investigating the effect on driving performance of auditory-vocal secondary tasks (such as cell phone and passenger conversations, speech-to-text, and a complex artificial cognitive task). The current objective is to estimate the relative risk of crashes associated with such auditory-vocal tasks. Contrary to the Utah study's assumption of an increase in crash risk from the attentional effects of cognitive load, a deeper analysis of the Utah data shows that driver self-regulation provides an effective countermeasure that offsets possible increases in crash risk. For example, drivers self-regulated their following distances to compensate for the slight increases in brake response time while performing auditory-vocal tasks. This new finding is supported by naturalistic driving data showing that cell phone conversation does not increase crash risk above that of normal baseline driving.

Self-driving cars are the future of mobility systems and should be a helping hand for Peoples with Disability (PWD) for their daily commute. The current technologies are addressing only some of the needs/specific type of disability or an application in mobile that helps them during their journey in Autonomous Vehicle (AV). PWD will be looking for opportunities for self-governing commute and will be willing to travel independently with their portable helping aids, personalized configurations in vehicle, along with organized help based on their need. Our study is to understand the mobility needs and challenges for all types of PWD and enable them by a universal/inclusive design approach in autonomous vehicles. The inclusive design/features in Autonomous/Shared vehicle could motivate the PWD to travel independently or with minimum help based on type of challenge they have.

Objective tools that can assess the demands associated with in-vehicle human machine interfaces (HMIs) could assist automotive engineers designing safer interaction. This paper presents empirical evidence supporting one objective assessment approach, which compares the demand associated with in-vehicle tasks to the demand associated with “benchmarking” or “comparison tasks”. In the presented study, there were two types of benchmarking tasks-a modified surrogate reference task (SuRT) and a delayed digit recall task (n-back task) - representing different levels of visual demand and cognitive demand respectively. Twenty-four participants performed these two types of benchmarking tasks as well as two radio tasks while driving a vehicle on a closed-loop test track. Response measures included physiological (heart rate), glance metrics, driving performance (steering entropy) and subjective workload ratings.

Many of the information systems in cars require visual attention, and a way to reduce both visual and cognitive workload could be to use sound. An experiment was designed in order to determine how driving and secondary task performance is affected by the use of information sound signals and their spatial positions. The experiment was performed in a driving simulator utilizing Lane Change Task as a driving scenario in combination with the Surrogate Reference Task as a secondary task. Two different signal sounds with different spatial positions informed the driver when a lane change should be made and when a new secondary task was presented. Driving performance was significantly improved when both signal sounds were presented in front of the driver. No significant effects on secondary task performance were found. It is recommended that signal sounds are placed in front of the driver, when possible, if the goal is to draw attention forward.

The rapid increase in the sophistication of vehicle automation demands development of evaluation protocols tuned to understanding driver-automation interaction. Driving simulators provide a safe and cost-efficient tool for studying driver-automation interaction, and this paper outlines general considerations for simulator-based evaluation protocols. Several challenges confront automation evaluation, including the limited utility of standard measures of driver performance (e.g., standard deviation of lane position), and the need to quantify underlying mental processes associated with situation awareness and trust. Implicitly or explicitly vehicle automation encourages drivers to disengage from driving and engage in other activities. Thus secondary tasks play an important role in both creating representative situations for automation use and misuse, as well as providing embedded measures of driver engagement.

The Dimensional Model of Driver Demand is extended to include Auditory-Vocal (i.e., pure “voice” tasks), and Mixed-Mode tasks (i.e., a combination of Auditory-Vocal mode with visual-only, or with Visual-Manual modes). The extended model was validated with data from 24 participants using the 2014 Toyota Corolla infotainment system in a video-based surrogate driving venue. Twenty-two driver performance metrics were collected, including total eyes-off-road time (TEORT), mean single glance duration (MSGD), and proportion of long single glances (LGP). Other key metrics included response time (RT) and miss rate to a Tactile Detection Response Task (TDRT). The 22 metrics were simplified using Principal Component Analysis to two dimensions. The major dimension, explaining 60% of total variance, we interpret as the attentional effects of cognitive demand. The minor dimension, explaining 20% of total variance, we interpret as physical demand.

This information is to aid the international air transport industry when considering the communication of safety information to sight-impaired passengers.

This information is to aid the international air transport industry when considering the communication of safety information to sight-impaired passengers.

Since little data exists to provide appropriate values for control parameters that would be appropriate for mature drivers, the following recommendations are of a general nature. However, they are based upon the current understanding of the aging processes that characterize mature drivers. Notwithstanding the lack of an extensive amount of data in this field, the dissemination of this SAE Information Report is considered to be appropriate and timely in light of the large increase in the number of mature drivers on the public roads, and because of the need to at least initiate efforts toward developing an information report covering this issue. It is realized that there may be cases where specific recommendations may conflict with vehicle packaging and/or operational requirements. Deviation from the recommendations may be necessary and permissible to achieve the best overall system performance.

ERTS is a computer controlled golf car whose primary functional goal is autonomous real-world navigation. Its mission is to serve as a platform for collaborative research in diverse areas of cognitive robotics, human-computer interaction, among others, as well as basic research in embedded and real-time systems. This purpose demands a highly flexible platform on which it is relatively easy to configure and access resources ranging from vehicle components to sensor hardware. One avenue we are exploring toward this end is a uniform file-space interface, based in the Plan 9 operating system that originated at Bell Labs, and more recently, the work of Brown and Pisupati. They extended the approach for embedded and system-on-chip applications. We advocate synchronous design methods, where applicable, as this presents a more tractable model for students and researchers with higher experimental aims.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were used to measure subjects’ cerebral blood flow in order to investigate higher-order human brain function activity associated with cognition and attention while operating a vehicle. As a first step, the effects of the fundamental driving environment on brain activity was investigated on the basis of fMRI measurements, with simultaneous measurement of the frontal region by fNIRS. The experiments involved the presentation of visual stimuli by video clips and the execution of simple individual tasks corresponding to steering wheel and pedal operations. As a second step, a driving simulator was used to reproduce narrow road driving and car-following driving situations requiring cognition and attention. Drivers’ mental activity under these conditions involving different levels of attention was measured by fNIRS.

An analysis of the first 35 back-over crashes reported by NHTSA's Special Crash Investigations unit was undertaken with two objectives: (1) to test a hypothesized classification of backing crashes into types, and (2) to characterize scenario-specific conditions that may drive countermeasure development requirements and/or objective test development requirements. Backing crash cases were sorted by type, and then analyzed in terms of key features. Subsequent modeling of these SCI cases was done using an adaptation of the Driving Reliability and Error Analysis Methodology (DREAM) and Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Methodology (CREAM) (similar to previous applications, for instance, by Ljung and Sandin to lane departure crashes [10]), which is felt to provide a useful tool for crash avoidance technology development.

A principal component analysis of the test track data from the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership Driver Workload Metrics project provided evidence for two major components in distraction during driving. The first was related primarily to driver workload, while the second was related to event detection and response. This result confirms previous test track findings. A new finding was that “mean single glance duration” (the average dwell time of the eye on the display or control needed to perform the task), loaded on the second dimension (associated with event detection and response), rather than the first (associated with driver workload). Hence, the duration of single glances to a secondary task is more important for event detection and response when driving than total eyes-off-road time or number of glances. These findings fit with the role of a single off-road glance immediately before a crash being predictive of crash probability.

The Deep Orange [1] initiative is an integral part of the automotive graduate program at Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research. The initiative was developed to provide the graduate students with hands-on experience of the knowledge attained in the various engineering disciplines and related disciplines (such as marketing and human factors psychology). For the 3rd edition of Deep Orange, the goal was to develop a blank sheet hybrid mainstream sports car concept targeted towards the Generation Y (Gen Y) market segment. The objective of this paper is to explain the unique interior-seating concept that was derived from extensive analyses of the Generation Y market segment based on surveys completed by owners of new cars and light trucks in the United States. The survey data clearly indicated that a significant portion of Gen Y would prefer a vehicle with 5 or more seating positions.

General guidelines that should be followed and basic principles that should be understood in order to create effective color displays for avionics applications are reviewed. The fundamentals of color use in text and symbolics as well as in non-alphanumeric displays are discussed in terms of the perceptual, physiological, and cognitive principles applicable to the human interface.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) refers to a method of displaying information in serial fashion on a display mounted at a fixed focal position relative to the viewer. RSVP is used in cognitive and perceptual psychology research and shows some promise in applications that involve reading text on displays. This preliminary research examines the potential for RSVP as a means of presenting driver information in automotive use cases. We investigated how RSVP influenced subjective impressions, participant recall of information, and the impact of its use while performing a simulated driving task. We describe the results of two studies and discuss future directions for research.