Using on-board driver feedback systems to encourage safe, ecological and efficient driving: the Foot-LITE Project

The Foot-LITE project addresses two of the Future Intelligent Transport Systems’ (FITS) Innovation Platform priorities in a joint call from the UK Department for Transport (DfT), the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in October 2006: namely, improving road safety and better travel and traveller information.

In response to increasing political and individual awareness of the need to address the social and environmental costs of unsafe, inefficient and highly polluting driving styles, the Foot-LITE research project seeks to deliver innovative driver/vehicle interface systems and services to encourage and hopefully persuade sustained changes to driving styles and wider travel behaviour. Stakeholders’ requirements help to define the functionalities of the system being developed in the context of a rapidly evolving market with many products potentially competing for Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) application or retrofitting to vehicles.

Foot-LITE, as an encouraging and possibly persuasive digital technology, will monitor drivers’ behaviour, vehicle metrics and road network conditions. These data sources will be analysed via an on-board device, providing information for appropriate advice, tips and useful reminders to be presented to the driver with consideration to the journey stage and the driver’s mental workload state.

The Foot-LITE project has reached the stage of human machine interface (HMI) design with two system designs being simulated in software, which will be tested using volunteers on a full scale vehicle simulator at Brunel University. The approved design, after revisions based on user feedback, will be constructed in hardware integrated into a user device with vehicle data inputs, touch sensitive liquid crystal display (LCD) and audible alert capability