No abstract

Telematics is arguably the next-wave in mobile computing: with most cars already equipped with multiple embedded computing platforms, we shall witness the development of a variety of mobile services and applications with significant commercial potential. Telematics will only become a commercial reality when the underlying architecture is able to address significant concerns related to the security and privacy of telematics data, and is able to provide context information from and to a large number of mobile data sources in a scalable and device-independent manner. A telematics platform should utilize existing Internet components and technologies but cannot rely exclusively on these, especially since mobile commerce applications in the telematics environment impose specific requirements on the relationships between various services and data providers. In this paper we describe how we are developing an open standards telematics platform based on the ts-PWLAN wireless service environment and the Telematics Resource Manager middleware. Our design employs existing web service interfaces coupled with novel technology for connecting to these through a wireless gateway. Our middleware acts as a common substrate for building and deploying a wide range of telematics applications. We describe how several of these applications are currently being built on our infrastructure.

No abstract

This simulator study examined a workload manager developed by Delphi Electronics for the SAVE-IT program and the effects of several different workload mitigation strategies on driver response to a surprise forward collision hazard. The strategies included no in-vehicle task or distraction (baseline); task allowed; task interrupted; and task denied. Forty-eight test participants (24 males and 24 females) between 35 and 55 years of age were randomly assigned in groups of 12 (balanced for gender) to each of the four conditions. Each participant then drove in the Ford VIRTTEX moving-base driving simulator on simulated urban and rural roads and was asked to perform various in-vehicle tasks. During a requested in-vehicle information system task, a vehicle parked on the side of the road would suddenly enter the travel lane, and the driver's response was assessed. Braking response to this critical event indicated no significant differences in mean brake response time as a function of type of mitigation strategy or gender. However, variability in driver responses was significantly less in the task denied condition as compared with the other conditions, possibly because drivers were sensitized to an increased driving demand. Three of 12 test participants in the task interrupted condition showed relatively large brake reaction times attributable to long delays between initial foot motion and braking onset. This delay may indicate an additional delay associated with processing the task interruption and the forward collision warning event itself. Recommendations are provided for further research and for mitigation and driver alerting on the basis of a workload manager's assessment of the driving situation.

No abstract