Transport Companies, Truck Drivers, and the Notion of Semi-Autonomous Trucks: A Contextual Examination

Semi-autonomous driving is considered a particularly promising approach for truck drivers, as this special driver group spends almost their entire working time in a moving vehicle. Semi-autonomous driving could add to increased driving safety and relief of the truck driver. Apart from these general benefits, little is known about the concrete requirements of semi-autonomous trucks in order to be beneficial for both truck drivers and their employers, the transport companies. In this paper, we report on a contextual inquiry study conducted in six different transport companies, thereby investigating the embedment of the truck driver in the company, current workflows, as well as potentials and barriers of semi-autonomous driving from company perspective. Our initial findings indicate that there are several operation fields that need to be considered when it comes to semi-autonomous trucks of the future.