Teleoperation is considered as a viable option to control fully automated vehicles (AVs) of Level 4 and 5 in special conditions. However, by bringing the remote drivers in the loop, their driving experience should be realistic to secure safe and comfortable remote control. Therefore, the remote control tower should be designed such that remote drivers receive high quality cues regarding the vehicle state and the driving environment. In this direction, the steering feedback could be manipulated to provide feedback to the remote drivers regarding how the vehicle reacts to their commands. However, until now, it is unclear how the remote drivers' steering feel could impact occupant's motion comfort. This paper focuses on exploring how the driver feel in remote (RD) and normal driving (ND) are related with occupants' motion comfort. More specifically, different types of steering feedback controllers are applied in (a) the steering system of a Research Concept Vehicle-model E (RCV-E) and (b) the steering system of a remote control tower. An experiment was performed to assess driver feel when the RCV-E is normally and remotely driven. Subjective assessment and objective metrics are employed to assess drivers' feel and occupants' motion comfort in both remote and normal driving scenarios. The results illustrate that motion sickness and ride comfort are dominated by steering velocity variations in remote driving, while throttle input variations dominate in normal driving. The results demonstrate that motion sickness and steering velocity increase both around 25% from normal to remote driving.

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Effective emission control technologies and eco-friendly propulsion systems have been developed to decrease exhaust particle emissions. However, more work must be conducted on non-exhaust traffic-related sources such as tyre wear. The advent of automated vehicles (AVs) enables researchers and automotive manufacturers to consider ways to further decrease tyre wear, as vehicles will be controlled by the system rather than by the driver. In this direction, this work presents the formulation of an optimal control problem for the trajectory optimisation of automated articulated vehicles for tyre wear minimisation. The optimum velocity profile is sought for a predefined road path from a specific starting point to a final one to minimise tyre wear in fixed time cases. Specific boundaries and constraints are applied to the problem to ensure the vehicle’s stability and the feasibility of the solution. According to the results, a small increase in the journey time leads to a significant decrease in the mass loss due to tyre wear. The employment of articulated vehicles with low powertrain capabilities leads to greater tyre wear, while excessive increases in powertrain capabilities are not required. The conclusions pave the way for AV researchers and manufacturers to consider tyre wear in their control modules and come closer to the zero-emission goal.@en

Remote driving plays an essential role in coordinating automated vehicles in some challenging situations. Due to the changed driving environment, the experiences and behaviors of remote drivers would undergo some changes compared to conventional drivers. To study this, a continuous real-life and remote driving experiment is conducted under different driving conditions. In addition, the effect of steering force feedback (SFF) on the driving experience is also investigated. In order to achieve this, three types of SFF modes are compared. According to the results, no SFF significantly worsens the driving experience in both remote and real-life driving. Additionally, less force and returnability on steering wheel are needed in remote driving, and the steering force amplitude appears to influence the steering velocity of remote drivers. Furthermore, there is an increase in lane following deviation during remote driving. Remote drivers are also prone to driving at lower speeds and have a higher steering reversal rate. They also give larger steering angle inputs when crossing the cones in a slalom manoeuvre and cause the car to experience larger lateral acceleration. These findings provide indications on how to design SFF and how driving behavior and experience change in remote driving.

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Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to lead the evolution of mobility. Motion sickness, known as car sickness, is one of the main issues AVs will face, and could jeopardise their wide impact. However, a limited work has been done on how the optimisation of suspension dynamics could contribute. In this direction, this paper explores the mitigation of car sickness and the improvement of ride comfort through the optimisation of passive suspension systems. More specifically, a half car model, which represents a passenger vehicle from IPG/CarMaker, is used to optimise front suspension system for minimising comfort, but also maintaining vehicle handling while the vehicle is driving over two different road classes. The evaluation of comfort is conducted using the common standardised metric suggested by ISO-2631. After having obtained the optimum design solutions, the optimal solutions are simulated using IPG/CarMaker by assigning the road profiles on a 23 km long countryside road path. Then, vehicle accelerations are transferred to the occupant's head using appropriate models from the literature for both back-on and back-off sitting conditions. Afterwards, car sickness and ride comfort are further assessed to explore in detail how the tuning of the suspension systems through optimisation has minimised the first and enhanced the latter. For the assessment of car sickness, a three dimensional detailed biomechanical human model is used. The results imply that the pitch velocity seems more suitable, as a cost function for optimising the suspension systems with regards to motion sickness mitigation. Therefore, it should be considered either on its own or in combination with metric suggested by ISO-2631.@en