Research

Driving Innovation in Aging and Human Technology Innovation

Understanding how older people learn, interact, and adopt technology is critical to moving inventions into everyday use. The Engineering Systems Division’s AgeLab—in collaboration with colleagues in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory—is working to design a car that enables older people to drive safely longer.

The lab’s cherry red VW Beetle fixedbase simulator, “Miss Daisy,”is designed to help researchers explore how in-vehicle warnings, navigation, and entertainment systems—as well as basic innovations in communications—are learned, adopted, and affect driving performance across the human lifespan.
Miss Daisy’s on-the-road mirror image, “Miss R osie,” is equipped with sensors and video systems to understand how strength, flexibility, and disease affect driving—including such basic tasks as backing up and parking.

Recently, the AgeLab developed the AwareCar—a black Volvo SUV that integrates more than $1 million of sensors, software, and data analysis systems to understand how visual attention, health, physiological change, cognitive workload, and in-vehicle technologies affect driving performance. The research vision is to realize a vehicle that integrates three critical subsystems of safe driving—the driver, the vehicle, and road conditions. One of the most sophisticated experimental vehicles at any university, the AwareCar senses the driver’s performance and adapts its own performance to both the driver’s needs and road conditions to achieve optimal safety and comfort.

Coughlin, J. and J. Pope, “A Consumer-Centered Approach to Intelligent Home Services to Support Health, Wellness & Aging-in-Place,” IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 27(4), 47–52, July/August 2008.

Coughlin, J., “Disruptive Demographics, Design and the Future of Everyday E nvironments,” Design Management Review, 18(2), 53–59, S pring 2007.