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The automation of our vehicles is an all-present topic with great benefits for society, particularly in the area of public transport and pilot projects of automated shuttle buses are already underway. However, they do not show the full potential of using them as a supplement to public transport, since single-occupancy registration of the vehicles usually allows only slow speeds and also requires a substitute driver on board. In our study, we aim to (1) examine the status quo of its user acceptance and (2) identify the roles of the operators and their tasks in automated urban shuttle buses. We conducted a mixed-method study including in-depth interviews, questionnaires, and in-the-field observations visiting pilot projects of the two most widespread pilot projects on German streets. Our results uncover the multiple roles and tasks the human operators currently assume. Furthermore, we developed design approaches for a digital companion substituting the operator in a long run and evaluated these concepts. A remote operator or a hologram were preferred solutions and we propose further design requirements for such companions. This work helps to understand the individual roles that operators currently occupy and provides a good basis for concepts of technologies that will perform these tasks in the future.

The spread of automated vehicles (AVs) is expected to disrupt our mobility behavior. Currently, a male bias is prevalent in the technology industry in general, and in the automotive industry in particular, mainly focusing on white men. This leads to an under-representation of groups of people with other social, physiological, and psychological characteristics. The advent of automated driving (AD) should be taken as an opportunity to mitigate this bias and consider a diverse variety of people within the development process. We conducted a qualitative, exploratory study to investigate how shared automated vehicles (SAVs) should be designed from a pluralistic perspective considering a holistic viewpoint on the whole passenger journey by including booking, pick-up, and drop-off points. Both, men and women, emphasized the importance of SAVs being flexible and clean, whereas security issues were mentioned exclusively by our female participants. While proposing different potential solutions to mitigate security matters, we discuss them through the lens of the feminist HCI framework.