Safety. Although a wealth of statistics is available about accidents, there is still a shortfall in details. Accident knowledge is required to inform how better to design systems for prevention. It can build upon similar work on how incidents are occurring but a specific understanding of the special circumstances pertaining to the UK context is also required. Despite the concern over driver distraction and the increasing complexity of the driving task, there is still insufficient knowledge in this area. Models are required for driver distraction & cognitive loading that can be used in the design and evaluation of new interfaces and driving support aids.
Cost of technology. The cost of ASSET based systems must be reduced for more widespread adoption other than in top-of-range premium vehicles. In some cases, there is a careful cost versus functionality balance to be sought that requires further investigation to accomplish. Additionally, cost reductions in the enabling technologies and constituent components help to make these systems affordable to a wider market. The challenge is in engineering these high performance constituents for low cost, volume manufacture.
System Integration. Much of the development to date has exploited single sensors to achieve each task. However, each sensor modality has its own advantages and performance drawbacks. Sophisticated techniques in multi?sensor data fusion can yield improvements in overall system performance and reliability that are greater than can be achieved by using each sensor separately. These techniques are well understood in other domains but are under-utilised and require further study to ensure their effectiveness in vehicle applications.
Reliability. The increasing complexity of ASSET applications places considerable demands upon how they can be tested. Systems will also need to interact with those in other vehicles and with infrastructure components, with a set of elements that may be outside the design control of one manufacturer, leading to standardisation issues. Exacerbating the problems, systems are becoming mission if not safety critical. Ensuring than they are thus operating correctly and safely becomes of paramount importance but concomitantly more difficult. System validation presents major challenges with many technical problems to be resolved. Areas for improvement include better modelling capabilities to assure and predict performance and rapid prototyping to give early feedback on functionality.
Technology Introduction. Solutions are sought on how to accommodate the mismatch in life cycles between vehicles and the telematics applications that are embedded in them. Further work on standards will underpin this work, as will progress in ways in which mid?life or in?service upgrades can be made to such systems in a cost effective and simple way. Other techniques that may assist new vehicle launches to intercept the latest technology breakthroughs would also be desirable. |
