User-Centered-Design Approach to Evaluate the User Acceptance of Seating Postures for Autonomous Driving Secondary Activities in a Passenger Vehicle

With the development of autonomous driving technology, the passenger vehicles of the future, would allow drivers to participate in non-driving secondary activities or use-cases. In order to facilitate the non-driving use-cases, the interior and the seating arrangements of autonomous passenger vehicles needs to be designed accordingly, The aim of the study is to derive common seating positions and angles for the different autonomous driving secondary activities from their original environments and then experimentally evaluate the user acceptance of these postures for each secondary activity in a passenger vehicle. A user experience questionnaire (UEQ) approach is used to evaluate the user acceptance of the seating postures for the mentioned autonomous driving secondary activity or use-cases. The secondary activities considered in the study include; use of laptop, use of smartphone, general reading, window gazing and sleeping. The angles used for the seating postures include; seat-pan angle, back rest angle and neck-flexion angle.