Workshop Naturalistic Driving Studies & Field Operational Tests

As part of the ongoing project on "Methodological Aspects of Naturalistic Driving Studies & Field Operational Tests", Chemnitz University of Technology (in cooperation with BMW) hosted a workshop on NDS/FOT on May 14th/15th in Munich.

Winfried König, head of the FAT workgroup sponsoring the project (in conjunction with BAST), opened the workshop on thursday morning, welcoming all the national and international guests. Dirk Wisselmann, leader for ConnectedDrive projects at BMW Forschung & Technik, expressed the industry's interest in NDS/FOT, and the importance of this set of methods. Josef Krems, Professor at CUT, introduced the project.

The morning session included four presentations on American ideas and views on NDS/FOT. Ann Brach, SHRP2 Deputy Director, presented the SHRP2 perspective on NDS. Mike Mollenhauer of VTTI spoke about data management in NDS, based on VTTI's experience in previous studies as well as new developments for upcoming research. Dave LeBlanc (UMTRI) presented a database approach for analysis with NDS/FOT. Jim Sayer, representing the Human Factors Division at UMTRI, emphasised the necessity of proper strategies and techniques for the analysis of video data of driver behavior.

In the evening, issues in and around NDS & FOT from Europe and Australia were presented. Trent Victor, representing both SAFER at Chalmers and Volvo Technology, gave an overview on Swedish efforts in naturalistic data collection. Mike Regan, currently Research Director with INRETS (France), presented his work within the Australian TAC SafeCar project. Oliver Carsten (ITS Leeds, UK), spoke about his experience in extracting performance indicators out of datasets acquired with low-cost data collection systems. Finally, Henning Mosebach (DLR, Germany), presented a vehicle independent low cost platform for naturalistic driving studies, which was developed in a similar FAT sponsored project.

On friday, exhibits of the low cost data acquisition platform of DLR (integrated in a production vehicle) and a highly instrumented vehicle of CUT could be examined, followed by informal group work on various issues of interest. Winfried König concluded the meeting, thanking the speakers for their willingness to discuss any question that arose, as well as all participants for their contributions.

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