Talk held at the DTU Transport Lunch Seminar on 25.7.23 at the Department of Technology, Management and Economics, DTU, Copenhagen.
We are constantly developing better technical systems for sustainable mobility. But what actually determines whether such transport systems fulfil their potential? In the end, it often comes down to the user. In other words: Sustainability = technical potential * user behaviour.
In this talk Prof. Dr. Thomas Franke looks at fundamental psychological concepts in the context of resource regulation in everyday situations and their application to the field of sustainable mobility. He explores concrete examples from research projects on eco-driving and smart charging/eco-charging of electric vehicles, eco-carsharing, energy efficiency at sea and integration of ride-pooling in public transport.
On the speaker:
Thomas Franke is a professor of Engineering Psychology at the Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems at Universität zu Lübeck. From 2009-2014 he did his PhD at Chemnitz University of Technology on user interaction with the range of electric vehicles, before joining Universität zu Lübeck in 2016 as associate professor (full professor in 2017). He is particularly interested in user diversity and a resource perspective on user-technology interaction with a strong focus on sustainable mobility and use-energy interaction.
So um thank you very much and thank you for having me and uh thank you for being here um and yeah I try to keep it as compact as possible in in 20 minutes and then we have time for a little uh discussion uh and yeah I focus today on
Sustainable Mobility as resource regulation from an engineering psycholog engineering psychology perspective uh and Felix uh already said uh all you to know perhaps one uh addition uh so my Origins so to say as a scientist is uh was in my PhD on uh user interaction with uh the range of electric vehicles
So um in very Past Times uh I had the privilege to be involved on one of these first uh International EV field trials uh in Berlin uh and other um cities where we had also the chance to um yeah publish some first psychological research papers on uh EV topics such as
Range stress or charging user types um or uh the range preference of actual EV users um and uh psychological range uh and also we did some uh seising on the structure of resource related action regulation of EV users in everyday usage and I will come back to this a bit uh in
This talk today uh and uh as we are two guests today from LC uh also bit more of an introduction to how is Lubec and why it should could be interesting to come to Luc at some point in time maybe uh for HFS Europe next year or also please
Feel invited is that uh we are at our Institute of um interactive and multimedia systems we are five young professors uh and we are somehow covering the full spectrum of human technology interaction research uh based on our research infrastructure and also with uh the creative uh young students of media informatics
Uh in a study program that focus on human Center design integrating design computer science and psychology um and this is also what my research group is about so we work at this intersection of computer science design and psychology um and pursue uh in the end you could say uh three key
Lines of research uh with focus on sustainable digital resource rutilization so in the end we say that uh we as humans must balance two classes of resources so our internal resources mental and physical and our external resources that we use um and uh we try to understand these Dynamics um more
Precisely in uh by going into very uh diverse applied contexts such as car sharing uh green shipping um and uh on the green line external resources or human basic needs and fitness tracking on the red line and of course we also work uh on all these research tools that
You typically need so like our Eco simlab driving simulator our field lab for bir Direction charging uh or also quite some stuff we do in scale development for example our at ATI scale so uh to assess affinity for technology interaction um that’s already in use uh in quite some projects um today
Uh I focus a bit more on eight projects uh that are more in the frame of sustainable Mobility but I’ll come to that uh later because I want to give you one more perspective which is um so from which perspective do we view or do I view uh these topics that I present
Today um because in each and every applied project uh we ask ourselves the same two key questions which are on one side what are the key challenges for human resource circulation in this digit digital environment and second how can humans optimally be supported in their resource regulation via system
Design uh and of course you can uh get a more um detailed Insight when visiting Google Scholar but you can also just um take your time practice some more German because unfortunately some videos or more videos are in German and have a look at our YouTube channel engineering
Psychology uh where you will see that in the core it’s always about this formula um being sustainability is product of human and technology so for example uh you can see there things on uh Energy Efficiency metrics and indicators for electric vehicles or our project climate crafting which is which is about carbon
Foot track carbon footprint tracking also in the field of Mobility um um yeah and so this just as an invitation um and now uh after uh like 5 minutes introduction we go to the thing that we really want to know about uh which is sustainable Mobility as resource
Regulation um and I want to start by uh making more clear what I mean with resource regulation um and I would say as a first takeaway resource regulation is an everyday action so you could even say every moment of our life can be viewed as resource regulation so if you
Say think about what are pre precious resources for you maybe time I mean just now like in in the lunch seminar food maybe good food uh maybe friends Health um Mobility um I mean every technical tool can be a resource for us um so um in the end uh
We have very very diverse resources that we utilize but all these resources follow the same psychological principles in the very core uh we try to achieve resource gains and avoid resource losses uh and in many everyday environments this is a continuous process of resource regulation um which is which is also
Important so there we come into play as engineering psychologist where we are not completely rational and it’s sometimes needed uh that we guide uh users uh or humans um for example and these resources also um uh we transact Resources with one another right so for example um we
Decide for a faster connection and exchange money for a Time gains or we opt for a Greener solution and accept some flexib flexibility losses or we say Okay I want to arrive at Copenhagen with my electric car today and it should have a certain uh charge when I arrive so I
Drive as fast as uh is okay with regard to the energy consumption um yeah and so in the end and I would say that um resource regulation is action regulation and that’s nice because it’s a combination of cognition and motivation and so there’s quite some psychology going on
Uh and if we go want to go one step further and ask ourselves okay how can restructure such s regulation or action regulation um Dynamics then uh this feedback control grp can be quite a good guidance and I mean it’s also inherent or a key design principle in many
Psychological series and can be applied for example to the topic of range interaction so user range interaction electric vehicles so leading in the end to the decision when to charge at home or also on Route uh or it can also be combine uh used to uh structure this Dynamic uh adaptation of driving
Behavior when one integrates uh different uh driving goals or one one one one integrate uh Energy Efficiency in the set of driving goals that we have as drivers but later a bit more about this so my first takeaway for today is we should view sustainable Mobility through a lens of resource regulation
Um now and if you look at the two key questions that I stated before then apply it or a bit more focused would be how can we make optimal resource regulation as easy as possible for humans and in the end this is a guiding question also for uh all these a
Projects uh that I will shortly point to um in the following slides and I start with uh one of my favorite questions and that’s what’s uh the most efficient way to drive to my favorite beach at the Baltic Sea um so um of course the most
Efficient way is to use the bicycle uh and if I ask what’s the most efficient way to go the 40 kilm to the beach then uh if I can’t use a bicycle then the next best answer is to take the 30 km route uh and here’s interesting
Interesting to see that our most common metric of Energy Efficiency is energy per distance which has no incentive for taking shorter routs so it doesn’t make us aware so there’s a certain blind spot uh this metric provides us uh and now if I took the uh 30 kilm Route then again
The question is how can I drive as efficient as possible of course and we have rolling resistance and aerodynamic resistance and when it comes to Dynamic resistance already interesting to see that um the faster you drive the less you gain in term of time gains uh but
The more you uh lose in terms of Energy Efficiency losses um so it’s not a good ratio on the end and uh actually I don’t know who of you has a um interface uh in his or her car to help to trade this energy consumption versus travel time
Metric uh and of course there’s even more then we go into engineering uh we drive uh or we more and more drive if electric motors these have a certain conversion efficiency uh map and you can use this conversion efficiency map to choose the optimal speed so message so
Far uhhuh message so far choose your speed wisely uh but we all know that reality is more complex uh like if you think you are a bus driver or you are in last mile delivery your Lo Logistics or your taxi service driver uh then of course uh it’s not just about choosing
The correct speed uh it’s about combining all these driver goals so of course we want to get there alive in time stressfree with reasonably energy costs and without disturbing other traffic uh and we do that by adapting our driver Behavior to match and balance these different driving goals and if you
Have enough time and we don’t have it now we could structure this from this um control here theoretic perspective but for now I would just point one box in this uh framework uh and ask the question what do safety time energy and uh pleasure have in common of course uh
They are all resources um and here we are again with this general statement we strive to achieve gains and avoid losses but we have bound rationality and ristics and biases that also apply to driving and to energy management or Resource Management in the end and we
Can view uh every um control of the energy flow in in your vehicle as an economic transaction of an input resource for for example electric energy to an output resource which is for example distance driven in each of these resource transaction can be framed differently so it can be represented as
Either gain or loss uh and in the end that’s the task of energy interface design to frame these resource transactions accurately um so for example today when we were on the on the highway here to Copenhagen uh which was the Salient information source that informed us about the um driving maneuver efficiency
Of course it was an instantaneous consumption indicator that’s available in most cars uh but we have found for example in in past research that um people have something we call a peak bias so if you accelerate people over um um yeah over representa the peak height
And not so much the integral over over an acceleration maneuver uh and also one has to say that uh this energy per distance metric is not the most accurate framing for an acceleration because acceleration efficiency is more like how many kilom uh kilometers per how many speed or kinetic energy you gain per
Invested uh unit of electric energy uh and you can depict that and uh to cut it short you can make an interface out of of it and this can look quite nice and it is something that is not available in any car maybe you would also not want it
Because of distraction issues uh but uh anyway it uh could be quite useful for Education uh topics and we examine such um uh interfaces uh in ouri project in our electric vehicle driving simulator which is uh quite over the last 5 years has been developed into quite a good
Digital twin of a Renault Zoe electric car uh for example here that’s a current study that we uh did my my PhD student M SC crit uh examining uh three or two displays versus no display and how these contribute to um Eco driving a performance but also energy Dynamics
Awareness so my key takeaway here we need action integrated energy interfaces so efficiency metrics and indicators we don’t have uh so far um in electric vehicles uh now as you know um electric vehicle driving is not just uh about efficient usage but also AIT about efficient replenishment of resources and
This is what our uh field lab renob is all about which is um um uh a field lab for studying bidirectional charging so green charging and smart charging with Nissan Leaf electric vehicles uh we are also in the process of uh veloping a digital representation or you could say
Something like a digital twin or Shadow but um Andre will talk more about uh this in in his task in his talk um and we use this lab also to do some applied research and user interface design for example in our project echos share where we design different enablers of echo car
Sharing both for individual settings so imagine you have a a solar panel on your roof and you want to efficiently utilize your own solar power for charging or also for car sharing so imagine you want to book a car sharing vehicle but the car sharing service provider wants you
To optimize your booking to um use or utilize screen charging also utilize the uh the vehicle as a uh buffer battery so um uh the key question that arises here applied aside from these very applied topics is how can we make it as easy as possible for human to
Behave optimally through maybe a user Center design of AI charging agents so not just an interface like we saw now but more uh an agent that communicates that interacts uh and in the end feels like cooperating with you and maybe feels like cooperating with you and many
Other users to integrate needs of uh different users into um uh an optimization function uh and this is something we are uh about to research in uh our project co- charge with Honda re research over 3 years so maybe uh in at some point in the future uh when we
Enter our electric car sharing car or our own privately used car uh maybe it says something like uh okay based on your data from the last three months you need a maximum of 100 km range tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. are you fine when I optimize the charging to that um but of
Course uh it’s not this project is not just about designing but it’s more uh about uh um examining and better understanding of this cooporation and what we are here um focusing is uh to better understand how people uh perceive cooperation with such an agent that optimizes certain resource utilizations
In the environment and we also have uh two talks um at hcii conference um during the next days here in Copenhagen um so my takeaway here is a comprehensive understanding of human a cooporation can help us to design better smart charging agents so and this leaves
Me uh two minutes for two last key questions um and the first one is um how do we fill and because we can’t go just with privately owned cars so we how do we fill the gap between public transport which obviously has its limits and private cars with attractive services
And one answer as we all might know is of course right pooling and we examine this in our project into Lubec where we focus on a perspective of basic human needs versus uh the perception of such Mobility service and uh over the last uh one and a half years we have developed
The perceived Mobility need satisfaction scale uh which is available in German and English so far uh and used it in a total of with one 600 um participants in different studies and this is here just one example where we focused on the uh issue of uh perceived autonomy so of
Course if you say I use a public transport your autonomy may be quite okay right so you see um there’s as well uh in the uh some um data here on the green greenish side and some data on the reddish side um if you look on the
Private car of course that’s much better I mean you can’t go much better if the parking situation doesn’t limit you than private cars uh and if you look in the right pooling service that we have in Luc then it’s not not worse and it can even be better than a private car
Especially when it comes to alcohol um okay so I uh my message here is we should look at human basic need satisfaction as a metric for good public transportation um but still there’s one elephant left in the room and that’s this picture namely all these 5,000 chips worldwide that produce 3% of our
Total carbon emissions uh and that uh are about to reduce these carbon emissions by 70% until 2050 and that’s a really huge task which of course needs a lot of tech Innovation but it also needs a lot of human factors Innovation uh because again there also Energy Efficiency is a
Product of technical potential and human behavior and this is what we focus on in our project mared data with a lot of um other partners uh and here we um examine or and investigate and design a decision support system for energy management on board so far focused on root planning uh
In the future maybe also focused on more applications that consume energy there’s also already a paper published and on Energy Research and social science and there’s some uh data available from our heal task analyzis and research on need satisfaction and Automation and uh um these are my 21 minutes leaving me
With one takeaway decision support systems can support efficient Energy Management on ships uh and this is my thank you [Applause] slide