Research project
Enhance driver behaviour and Public Acceptance of Connected and Autonomous vehicLes (PASCAL)
- Start date: 1 June 2019
- End date: 30 November 2022
- Funder: EU Horizon 2020
- Primary investigator: Dr Haibo Chen
- Co-investigators: Professor Subhajit Basu
PAsCAL is an international project aimed to develop a multidimensional map of public acceptance of higher levels of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), pointing out any critical issues on the matter, particularly investigating the new “driver” needs considering different modes and mobility services.
PAsCAL’s goal is to create a “Guide2Autonomy” (G2A), a set of guidelines and recommendations aimed at accelerating the user-friendly evolution of connected automated vehicles and transport systems.
The 36-month project proposes an awareness-driven and large-scale penetration approach to address all issues raised by the majority (if not all) of the general public that hinder the wide market uptake of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV). It will not only focus on the interaction of the “users” in or near CAV, but also assess the impact of connected transport on people’s well-being, quality of life, and equity.
PAsCAL will use of a strongly interdisciplinary mix of innovative tools from both human science and technology, to capture the public’s acceptance and attitude, analyse and assess their concerns, model and simulate realistic scenarios for hand-on practices, and validate the research innovation in a number of trials in the real world.
The association to the Consortium of special categories of users, such as disabled persons, and of service providers with a global outreach of millions of members and several thousand customers across the EU will ensure results consistency, taking into account major social obstacles/barriers that may hinder the acceptance of CAV and would allow their reuse in new businesses, services and applications.
The Consortium is led by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, and the Leeds team led by Dr Haibo Chen at the Institute for Transport Studies. Dr Subhajit Basu’s time will chiefly be spent on researching the legal and regulatory frameworks required to accelerate the user acceptance of autonomous vehicles and connected transport systems.