Yearly Archives: 2023

Fully automated (Level 4) and demand-responsive public transport will be tested on a large scale for the first time in northwestern Berlin during the NoWeL4 project. The collaborative project, led by Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport. Partners are the Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft ZTG of TU Berlin and the Institut für Klimaschutz, Energie und Mobilität e.V. IKEM.

The sophisticated technical and organizational implementation follows a user-centered approach, which is supported by the participation of all social stakeholders and a comprehensive technology assessment performed by ZTG. The goal is to provide passengers a fully positive user experience with the new on-demand service – from booking to destination.

Much has happened in the field of digitally mediated distance communication in recent years – online video meetings and video calls have become an integral part of most people’s lives, even beyond the pandemic. However, current solutions are often very pragmatically oriented, offering only a limited range of communication channels, mainly speech and facial expressions. As a result, they are well suited for work-related contexts, but rather less so for enabling communication over distance in the private domain, which creates connection and closeness and can also be emotionally fulfilling.

Together with our partners from the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Institute for Manufacturing Automation and Production Systems FAPS at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg and C&S Computer und Software GmbH, we will be developing a new type of communication medium (the so-called ToCaros) in a user-centred process over the next three years. With the help of intelligent textiles and dielectric elastomer actuators, these ToCaros will primarily enable non-verbal communication over distance, such as the transmission of haptic stimuli or light signals. In addition to coordinating the research network, HFC is responsible for the engineering psychology-related aspects of the development process, ELSI reflections and the planning and implementation of user studies.

Following a stakeholder analysis to identify the groups who could potentially benefit from civil drone use, we utilized the online survey method in order to better understand the general publics or the overflown communities’ perspective on the use of drones, mainly for industrially and commercial purposes. These project activities are performed within the H2020 EU project ADACORSA. 

We are delighted to present the details of the study and our results of the survey at IHIET  9th International Conference on Human Interaction and Emerging Technologies: Future Applications (IHIET-AI 2023) that would be held on 13-15 April, 2023. We are looking forward to interact with other researchers showcasing their works and the overall conference proceedings.

Noise has a strong direct influence on our health and well-being. It is therefore obvious to protect people from noise or to avoid the generation of noise. Since a large part of disturbing noise nowadays depends directly on human behavior, promoting noise-aware behavior is a promising measure towards a quieter and thus healthier environment. HFC, together with the nexus Institute and the departments of audio communication, and psychoacoustics at the Technical University of Berlin, is now conducting research on behalf of the German Environment Agency to determine how aware people are of the noise they themselves generate. Furthermore, it will be evaluated what influence public participation can have on people’s noise awareness. Based on this, strategies and measures are to be developed to motivate people to adopt a more noise-conscious behavior in the long term. In this project, HFC is responsible for the conception and implementation of the qualitative survey and the quantitative field study.

On January 1, 2023, the iNOTAM (Integration of digital NOTAMs) project was launched, involving three project partners. Under the consortium leadership of HFC Human-Factors-Consult and in collaboration with project partners m-click.aero and Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, the creation, processing, and provision of NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) will be digitized. NOTAMs are brief, manually created messages for pilots and airport operations personnel regarding flight operational restrictions, such as construction sites, maintenance, or other equipment failures. Current NOTAMs are formulated by operators and are currently only readable and interpretable by humans due to abbreviations or lack of context. The project will utilize the existing digital database of air traffic infrastructure to create georeferenced, fully digital NOTAMs at the airport. These digital NOTAMs can then be provided to all authorized traffic participants, such as pilots in their assistance and navigation systems.