The driving task: cognitive and sensorimotor aspects
Connected and Autonomous Vehicle. Technologies, Challenges and Deployment

It is undoubtedly a natural human tendency to design automata in one's own image. The autonomous vehicle is no exception to the rule: to understand its operating logic, we need to understand how the human driver manages the task of driving.

Let's look at the road scene in figure 1 and consider the vehicle in red, which we call EGO hereafter. We assume that the vehicle V₁ is braking hard. The driver of EGO will perceive this situation and attempt to avoid collision. He has three options:

1. Staying in lane and attempting emergency braking: this option exposes the driver to a front-end collision if the maneuver fails, and a rear-end collision by V₅ ;

2. Avoiding V₁ by a left-hand lane change: this option exposes the driver to loss of control...