What is AUGMENTO project?

AUGMENTO (Development of an innovative human-machine interaction system using augmented reality and measurement of user mental activity in autonomous vehicles) is a project developed within the Spoke 9 of the Italian National Center for Sustainable Mobility (MOST), focused on urban mobility.

Its goal is to address the new challenges of increasingly autonomous vehicles, where on the one hand there is a desire to reduce active requests to the user, but on the other hand it is necessary to ensure that the vehicle knows the user's state in order to guarantee that (1) the driver is still in a suitable condition to supervise the vehicle and intervene if necessary; and (2) the passenger is always in the best conditions of comfort and trustiness in the vehicle.

Cutting-edge wearable technologies for monitoring brain activity were integrated with mixed and augmented reality tools, to make the vehicle aware of the user’s state and able to dynamically adapt to it, so closing the loop between them. The simulated concept paves the way for a new, safer, and more efficient dimension of human–machine interaction.

In the first experimental phase, tests were conducted under static driving conditions, both manual and fully autonomous.The objective was to identify neurophysiological indicators—such as workload, attention, and stress—capable of translating the Driver Performance Envelope and Passenger Comfort Envelope developed by psychologists into measurable parameters that can be directly used by the vehicle’s system. In the second phase, the process moved from observation to action, testing the adaptive control logic of the autonomous driving system.

The AUGMENTO solution, i.e. a framework by which the vehicle receives real-time information about the user’s cognitive and emotional state, summarized into synthetic brain-based indicators of performance and comfort, was validated in an Augmented Reality simulator. Based on these indicators, the vehicle can dynamically adjust its behavior, modifying for example the level of automation, changing driving style, or implementing comfort-oriented strategies.

This stage confirmed how augmenting the system with human-state awareness can truly enhance the harmony and safety of human–machine collaboration. The project was assigned by the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering (DICEA) of Sapienza University of Rome, and it was coordinated by BrainSigns with the high professional contribution of h the Traffic Psychology Unit of the Catholic University of Milan, and of TXT S.p.A., a leader in digital solutions and simulation technologies.