Human-Centered Teleoperation for Tram-Trains: A Research Roadmap

Increasing automation in public transportation raises fundamental questions about how to ensure safe, scalable, and socially acceptable solutions. Teleoperation is discussed as an element of future operational concepts for rail-based transport, where remote support could mitigate staff shortages and serve as an efficient fallback option. Nevertheless, existing knowledge is fragmented because teleoperation is conceptualized differently across application domains. In robotics, it primarily refers to manual control from distant locations or with line of sight, whereas research on automated road vehicles distinguishes among remote driving, assistance, and monitoring. These differences highlight heterogeneous terminology, system requirements, and workplace and operator demands. This contribution integrates relevant perspectives from recent systematic reviews, project experiences, and a framework that views remote operators as part of a socio-technical system to identify central human factors challenges for tram-train teleoperation. These challenges include varying workload, the formation and maintenance of correct mental models, decision-making under uncertainty, and the effects of context switching on information processing. Building on these foundations, a research roadmap is outlined to develop a human-centered teleoperation concept for tram-train systems as part of a prospective large-scale initiative. The aim is to advance teleoperation in rail-bound mobility and to provide a structured basis for future experimental studies.