I am a member of a team of researchers at UCSD pursuing a multidisciplinary research project sponsored by Nissan Research Center and the California Digital Media Innovation Program. The primary objective of the project is to develop a Human-Centered Intelligent Driver Support System (HC-IDSS). The goal of the HC-IDSS is to support drivers in attention management, perception, decision-making and control tasks.

Our lab's specific focus is on ethnographic studies to explore sense making of drivers and how cognitive factors influence driving behavior. We are particularly interested in identifying the meaningful distinctions drivers make of their driving experience. To investigate this we are collecting data as drivers follow prescribed routes designed to allow us to see how they behave in a variety of driving conditions. During these drives we collect think-aloud protocols and notate interesting events relevant to our interests
or to those of our collaborators (e.g., situations that may be challenging for automatic identification from sensor data). Images on the left show the car we have instrumented for our studies. We are able to record a rich set of video and audio data. This includes a first-person video from a small camera mounted on glasses worn by the driver. The computer in the trunk is equipped to digitize and record multiple video and audio streams on a array of disks. The video and audio data streams are synchronized. In addition, timestamped data from car controls and instruments (taken from the car's CAN-bus) provides details of steering, breaking, acceleration, as well as other parameters of the car's operation. The data is synchronized and linked to GPS data and notes made during driving sessions.