Jaguar Land Rover to Work with AHEAD to improve HMI for drivers

Jaguar Land Rover is strongly bonding with top technologies and academic bodies in a project that is aiming to lessen the threat of driver distraction in the future vehicles with improved human machine interface systems or HMI.

Photo 1: JAGUAR

Land Rover has joined Advanced Human Factors Evaluator For Automotive Distraction (AHEAD) group and would work with DENSO and Touchstone Evaluations, DENSO and MIT AgeLab on issues such as the demands made by the modern HMI technologies on car drivers. The research and study are likely to help in developing a new system that would potentially reduce distraction and offer intuitive, suitable and safe driving experience. The development would also meet the future automobile industry norms and requirements.

The conglomerate draws top researchers, car manufacturers and distributors to take a fresh view on the use of touch screens, voice controls and switch gears to reliably measure their effectiveness. The aim of AHEAD is to build a proven toolkit for objective evaluation that can be used by the industry in assisting HMI developments. This would greatly help electronic suppliers and manufacturers with effective and reliable data so that they produce interfaces that fulfill all requirements related to manufacturers, consumers and industry regulations. This is the first time that Jaguar Land Rover is associated with MIT in a project. The involvement with AHEAD is the latest series of measures taken by the company to hone its designs with advanced engineering, research and development.

Photo 2: Jaguar Land Rover to Work with AHEAD to improve HMI for drivers

The present methods of assessing HMI technologies, primarily utilizes norms developed before the birth of modern technologies such as touch screens, multi function controllers and voice controls. The old methods also don’t take the impact on the drivers while they move between various modes of use and they include vision, gesture, cognition, touch haptics and sound.  The consortium aims to make it possible to appraise the demands while a vehicle is on prototype level so that if necessary alterations can be effected effectively and easily.