Inclusive Autonomous Vehicle Interior Design (IAVID) Platform

Passenger comfort in vehicles is a complex, human-centric segment of the vehicle interior design. Designing an ergonomic vehicle requires incorporating a wide range of interdisciplinary information as an input in the development process. Novel autonomous technologies offer possibilities for achieving increased comfort and safety. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) present an opportunity for redefining the standard design approaches by providing options for improved ergonomics and meeting the needs of a wide range of users, among which are persons with impairments. Persons with impairments are likely to be the early adopters of AVs due to the fact that these vehicles can allow them to travel independently and become more involved in social activities. However, this brings a new challenge for designers who need to combine universal design principles and recommendations for inclusion, in addition to ergonomic principles, vehicle standards and regulations, technological advancements, as well as design trends, in order to provide fully ergonomic, and accessible modern vehicle models. The difficulty of following and including all this trans-disciplinary knowledge in the vehicle development process requires finding a suitable method to systematize the data and simplify their use.This paper aims to propose a platform for inclusive autonomous vehicle interior design (IAVID) which will upgrade the usual design principles in a manner that they can support the creation of ergonomic and inclusive AV interiors. The proposed IAVID platform is based on systems engineering (SE) and model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and is intended for organizing and constantly updating all relevant interdisciplinary information needed as an input in the AV interior development. The constant updating of information can enable continuous recognition of the changing needs and the formulations of new directions to which future research should be aimed at. To achieve this, the proposed platform is composed of separate databases for the design input information from different fields. The information in the databases can be constantly refreshed and linked with the AV interior subsystems (components) in order to define the characteristics that those subsystems need to possess in order to satisfy their main functions. The hierarchy of the AV systems and subsystems at different levels, as well as the functions they need to achieve are generated by applying SE methods. The MBSE methods, on the other hand, are used to represent the proposed platform by model that can easily be understood by programmers and be directly applied in the field of informatics using a suitable programming language.This platform is intended to be used as a tool mainly for industrial designers who often lack expertise in technological and engineering domains of product design and they might have limited knowledge of design for inclusion. The use of the proposed IAVID platform provides a way to bridge the knowledge gaps. All the information provided by the platform can also be available to all the members of the interdisciplinary development team, which as a result will facilitate their communication and strengthen the link between all stakeholders. By doing so, the interdisciplinary collaboration among vehicle development teams can be strengthened.