Plenary Lecture
Interactive Simulators as Research and Assessment Tools in Transport Engineering
Professor Petr Bouchner
Head of Department of Vehicles at Faculty of Transportation Sciences
Driving Simulation Research Group
Czech Technical University in Prague
Czech Republic
E-mail: bouchner@lss.fd.cvut.cz
Abstract: Hand in hand with technological progress in transport, bringing highly sophisticated and complex technologies, it is important to seriously take into account problems of human factors. Reliability and safety of interaction between the human operator and him/her controlled artificial system (machine) become a crucial and recent problem of transport systems. This needs to be deeply investigated with use of modern technological tools and with use of similar means the human operators should be trained and their skills and abilities checked. On the other hand, the machines (i.e. controlled artificial systems users interact with) should be designed and tested with human factors in mind, to be ergonomic, user friendly, intuitive and fault forgiving. With the sophisticated design, construction and production technologies, the advanced interactive simulation systems started to be understood as the most promising tools in this area. Nowadays, the high quality simulators are widely considered as valid devices for training of operators, learning how to handle situations under demanding conditions; for pilots, ship captains, professional or common drivers, but also for research and development purposes dealing with reliability of driver-car interaction, for solving a large variety of human-machine interaction problems (HMI).
The interactive simulators of vehicles give a wide range of possible applications in the transportation area. This presentation covers the topic of the simulation technologies used for research tasks and training purposes. It provides a hearer with an overview of important milestones and important examples of interactive transportation means simulators over the world. A special focus is on those devices, which were developed in Czech Republic (and former Czechoslovakia). The presentation shows and explains their main principles, also a scenario and experiment design and measuring tools and methods, which could extract useful information from measured data.
The lecture is based on results and examples from 15 years of research effort in this area that will be shown in pictures and videos of the systems, which are continuously being developed by the author’s team within Driving Simulation Research Group at Czech Tech University in Prague.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Academic career: 2003 - Master Degree at CTU Prague (Faculty of Electro-engineering), specialization in computer engineering, 2007 - Doctoral Degree at CTU Prague (Faculty of Transportation Sciences) “Driving simulators for HIM research”, 2011 degree of associate prof. (doc.) at CTU Prague. Since 2003 researcher and university teacher, since 2007 Head of Driving Simulation Research Group, since 2008 deputy head of Laboratory of Systems Reliability of FTS,CTU and Institute of Informatics of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, since 2011 head of Department of Vehicles at FTS CTU in Prague, since 2013 member of the faculty Scientific Board.
Scientific activities: research activities in interactive and driving simulator construction and development, HMI in vehicles, human factors in transportation, measurements and analysis of complex data, implementation of virtual reality tools into the experiments, design of experiments and their analysis, member of editorial board of scientific journal Neural Network World and scientific journal Advances in Transportation Studies.
Author and coauthor of several tens of papers, chapters in journals, book chapters, books, research report on interactive simulators, human factors in transportation, ergonomics, driver’s attention and fatigue. Member of expert groups of PIARC, ESoP by European Committee, Czech National Committee for Norms (Gestor of Human Factors in Transport WG), member of Czech Board for Cosmic Technologies. Main solver (responsible) of several national scientific and applied research projects (grants).