Investigating the effect of Autonomous Driving on the interior architecture of a Porsche sports car.

Abstract

In today’s world, provision of efficient, safe and fun mobility is one of the main challenges in our highly populated and dynamic urban environments. Traditional and passive mobility systems, which only rely on human control inputs are no longer safe and suitable to operate in these highly unpredictable environments. This increasing complexity in combination with physical and cognitive limitations of humans, have caused significant efficiency and safety problems. In the other words, humans are increasingly less qualified to deal with the manual control challenges of a road car. Recent statistics shows that more than 90% of the road accidents are caused by human control errors and failure in providing appropriate responses on time. Real-time assistance from computers and intelligent systems can effectively compensate for these errors. Advanced Driver Assisting Systems (ADAS) and implementation of Autonomous Driving (AD) can potentially save lives and reduce the financial damages of road accidents. In the year 2040, AD will reach a technology maturity phase and self-driving cars will become commercially available for the consumers. In this period, a high performance Porsche sports car, equipped with an AD assist will be introduced to the market. This advanced sports car will be able to prevent fatal accidents. In the other words, this vehicle will regulate its motion in the urban environment in such way that passengers will remain safe. Therefore, with this high level of active safety protection, the majority of the contemporary passive safety systems will be removed from the interior of this vehicle. This aspect will provide significant freedom for industrial designers to create a reduced, open and adaptive interior architecture for a Porsche sports car. Furthermore, this AD assisted sports car will be able to provide a highly emotional driving experience on a racetrack and also a gentle and comfortable autonomous ride in an urban environment. This will be achieved by providing different modes of driving and adaptive interior components.