Perspectives on Automotive Automation and Autonomy

As automation becomes more capable, the need to craft designs compatible with people becomes more important. This is particularly true with increasingly autonomous vehicles, which have begun to change what it means to drive. Kaber (2018) argues that the levels-of-automation framework provides a useful perspective to guide design, but he acknowledges that others, such as Dekker and Woods (2002), have argued otherwise. The levels-of-automation perspective addresses an essential issue of “who does what,” and the Dekker-Woods perspective addresses an equally important issue of how to coordinate automation and people: “how to work together.” Kaber argues for greater precision in describing human behavior as it relates to automation, but this commentary argues for greater precision in describing automation as it relates to people. This paper describes a perspective that received little attention in Kaber’s review: automation elements as part of a network, addressing the issue of “what’s connected.” Applying this perspective to the challenge of increasingly autonomous vehicles shows that considering several perspectives may be more effective than fine-tuning the single perspective of “who does what.