The Swedish car manufacturer, Volvo Cars, are a pioneer in the automotive industry regarding vehicle safety. Ever since they invented the three-point seat belt, the safety aspect has been their main priority. Today, a car is equipped with new technology and is highly dependent on software solutions. This implies that software features are used to increase the safety of the car. The level of uncertainty increases with the new features, which highlights the importance of creating a robust product to avoid potential problems. During the last decade, the DCOV approach (Define – Characterize – Optimize – Verify) evolved to create a product that is insensitive to variation and appreciated by the customers. Volvo Cars are currently developing a camera monitoring system (CMS) that is supposed to replace the conventional rear-view mirror with an exterior camera and an interior display. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to develop a robust design for the CMS that satisfies the customers. By using the DCOV approach, the aim is to identify potential risks and failure modes to avoid hardware and software related problems, and at the same time, develop a product that is based on the voice of the customer. This thesis demonstrates the problems with the conventional mirrors and the parking assistance cameras, which are associated with the folding function, the mirror adjustment, and the wide-angle module. The analysis of customer surveys indicates that blind spot indicators are appreciated by the customers while the mirror size is a critical factor. The mirrors need to be large enough to provide a good rear-view visibility, but small enough to maintain good forward visibility. A parameter diagram, robustness checklist and a system failure mode and effect analysis (S-FMEA) were conducted to identify risks, noise factors and failure modes with the CMS. It resulted in 44 failure modes where six of them were considered as critical, which means a high level of severity or frequent occurrence. The six critical failure modes were identified at the S-FMEA meetings with the business units Manufacturing, Display systems, Electromagnetic compatibility and CMS camera. Three business units were software related, which shows the difficulties with the transition from a hardware related rear-view mirror to the CMS. The recommendations for Volvo Cars are divided into two categories, where the first is associated with the CMS and should be seen as a continuation of this thesis. Volvo Cars should complete the S-FMEA and the included actions. By conducting the recommendations for the CMS, it will be properly tested to resist noise factors and manage potential variation. The long-term recommendations are proposals for future actions, which include a CMS for the inner mirror and investigate BLIS options. If the recommendations are considered, it will increase the possibility of creating a robust design, based on the voice of the customer. The result of this study highlights the power of the DCOV approach, as it clearly shows that it is possible to reduce the warranty costs. If the folding function is excluded, and the CMS software becomes easy to update, the warranty costs could be reduced by SEK 5 million.

This Master Thesis was conducted in the Industrial Design Engineering program at theChalmers University of Technology in collaboration with RISE and Volvo Cars. The aimwas to investigate the difference in driving performance between a traditional mirror, CameraMonitoring System (CMS), and CMS with augmented reality information (AR). It wasfurthermore to develop guidelines for applying this knowledge when designing CMS forincreased user performance in cars. Literature studies, expert interviews, workshops, anduser tests were used to discover this knowledge.The user test was conducted in a virtual environment, with four driving scenarios definedfor testing. The scenes and animations for the test were built in Unity, and the test wasconducted in a simulated driving environment with VR-rig. Four categories of data werecollected in the test. Twenty-one participants from Volvo Cars completed the test and providedrelevant feedback on the design of CMS & AR.The user test results revealed that the participants’ driving performance using CMS (withoutaugmented information) did not improve over traditional mirrors. Most participantsindicated that they would only upgrade from a traditional mirror to a CMS car with AR,rather than just a CMS car, as CMS did not provide enough benefit over traditional mirrors.The paper also discussed possible reasons behind this finding.The feedback and suggestions from the participants on the design of CMS & AR obtainedthrough questionnaires and interviews are organized into a guideline on the design ofCMS & AR. In addition, this paper gave recommendations for future study.Finally, this paper also discussed the challenges and experiences encountered in this study.Among them, the limitation of doing tests in a VR environment is highlighted to helpfuture CMS research and testing. / Safe Car Driving with Head Up Displays andCamera Monitor Systems: (SCREENS) (Vinnova Dnr: 2020-05129)