Investigation on human factors and key aspects involved in Autonomous Vehicles -AVs- acceptance: New instruments and perspectives

The enormous audience that will be impacted by the spread of autonomous vehicles (AVs) will count individuals with different ethnicity, culture and understanding; many disciplines are involved in order to intercept key-aspects of their introduction. According to a “post-disciplinary” approach, training all of them and helping them accept and take advantage of this new technology will be a huge challenge for the years to come. Human factors influence all the process too: which are the most common obstacles to the AVs technology acceptance? What are the main causes? What are the best ways to overcome these barriers? An analysis based on the demographic differences -such as age, gender, culture, personal experience- and abilities of the users can give a huge contribution to the matter; in the paper, an investigation and a possible application of new instruments and techniques is also provided. The aim is understanding if an innovative approach like gamification can help in collecting the new kind of data and in analyzing user fears, limits and needs. With the support of cognitive ergonomics principles to formulate new synergic solutions, it could be possible to create a virtuous circle composed of preventive profiling -understanding how people perceive the AVs and what they want from them- and targeted training -to grant the necessary knowledge everyone need through emotional involvement-.