The rise of automation is proceeding rapidly and the autonomous vehicle, which constitutes a form of artificial life, will soon be a reality on the streets. The research will address a fundamental issue which must be addressed if the new autonomous vehicles are to be accepted and appreciated by the general public. The research will develop criteria for evaluating whether an interaction with an autonomous vehicle can be considered “natural or not” and will define design guidelines for introducing the criteria into the automotive design process. Recent research has identified the issue of “naturalness” as being one of the main roadblocks to the timely introduction of autonomous vehicles, thus research to address this fundamental issue would seem urgent.

Automotive research often indicates that cars serve three primary roles: functional, symbolic, and affective. However, the meaning-based and emotional dimensions of driver-car interaction are sometimes overlooked in favour of functional considerations. While cognitive and quantitative approaches dominate the literature on driver-car interaction, there is less evidence of including human emotions, needs, values, and context. Limited attention has been given to studying the aspects of naturalness of interaction in the automotive design research. Additionally, it may be argued that the car has been somewhat neglected in sociological and anthropological research.

Automobile dashboards are undergoing a transformation, transitioning into intelligent interfaces primarily composed of large screens. However, there are indications that certain secondary systems,
such as driving-based communication controls, and tertiary systems, such as infotainment and comfort controls, exhibit unnatural characteristics. Despite this, the concept of natural interaction remains largely unexplored in the automotive industry. Research in automotive interfaces has primarily focused on quantitative aspects, overlooking the importance of naturalness in interaction. To propel the field forward, there is a need for a measurement scale derived from thorough qualitative investigations into the naturalness of interacting with secondary and tertiary controls including
climate, navigation, music, phone calls controls.

The Naturalness of Interaction research aims to:

• Define the Construct of naturalness from existing knowledge in the subject areas of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, sociology and robotics, along with the human factors, user experience and design research.
• Identify through co-design activities what the main dimensions of natural-feeling interaction are between ordinary drivers and automobile secondary and tertiary controls.
• Develop and Validate a "measurement scale for driver-car naturalness" by rating drivers’ naturalness perceptions of various interactions with their cars.
• Extend the usefulness of the measurement scale to assess how might driver-car interaction feel natural in future autonomous cars.

Current Outputs

Research to date by the researcher Gustav Moorhouse has developed a framework through the triangulation methodology of extensive literature review, workshops and interviews. The results of the process suggests that naturalness can be improved by focussing on four areas:

- using direct manipulation with the medium, whether it is digital or physical;
- encouraging high contextual specificity, adapting to the present scenario of driver needs and road condition;
- reusing people’s existing skills\, thereby lowering the required cognitive load;
- by achieving a low abstraction between the interaction and the medium.