Edel EU Project: User requirements and customer benefit analysis in the design of a novel driver support system for night vision

EDEL is a three years R&D project funded within the European Fifth Framework IST programme for Intelligent Transport Systems. The project main goal resides in the development of an advanced vision enhancement system for night driving based on: near infrared sensors, a novel illumination system, and an innovative human machine interface. EDEL's expected impact is on safety in road transport, in the prevention of accidents and consequent fatalities and injuries. Infrared imaging may be well-suited to night conditions only if the information is displayed to the driver adequately. An appropriate consideration of user requirements in the design phase will increase EDEL benefits and customer acceptance. Authors of this paper devised a focus group concept that was conceived to identify both customer benefit and initial system performances specification. Groups were defined to represent both those people who are most exposed at incidents when driving at night (young and elderly) and the majority of the driving population (middle aged). This approach allowed to come up with a set of unified requirements for the system to be designed.