Driver-vehicle interfaces and interaction: Where are they going?

Car evolution The car was born around a century ago and its evolution has been incredibly fast, both in technology and in style. We have to move through different social and cultural evolutions to arrive to the present state of the art. The technical and social acceleration of the 20th century is well visible looking at the different worldwide research programs. Nowadays digital content and ubiquitous computing are changing us and our life style. New concepts involving the full society are emerging and the term "personal mobility" becomes more and more used together with "co-operative driving" and "environmental compatibility". HMI evolution Human Machine Interaction (HMI), initially limited only to the primary in-vehicle commands, has been a major issue since the beginning. In which direction is it moving? Which technological efforts will be key factors to face the challenges of the future? We are in the middle of a transition phase where the world has to cope with and to solve big problems as energy and climate change that can strongly influence the future of the automotive industry and not only. © European Conference of Transport Research Institutes (ECTRI) 2009.