Felix Wulf

Recommendations Supporting Situation Awareness in Partially Automated Driver Assistance Systems

It is believed that automated driving is able to fulfill the demand for comfort and safety in traffic. Recent developments have been able to take over all parts of the driving task in specific situations. However, it remains to the driver to monitor the systems behavior upon errors and to intervene in the case of critical situations. On account of the automation, the driver may not be able to overlook the whole situation in the same way he would do while driving manually. In addition to that, the drivers motivation to perform secondary tasks while being driven enhances these challenges. The research activities presented in this paper are concentrated on the development and the evaluation of certain human-machine interface (HMI) mechanisms. It is hypothesized that such mechanisms have a positive impact on drivers situation awareness (SA) and resulting driving safety (DS). The evaluation of these mechanisms occurred in a driving simulator study. Based on the evaluation results, a system presenting the secondary tasks display in the vehicles head-up display is proposed. Thereby, the driver is expected to be able to keep the vehicles environment in his peripheral field of view without being distracted too much. At the same time, relevant elements to operate the secondary task should be located on the steering wheel. This is expected to reduce the time needed for steering reactions, as drivers keep at least one hand on the steering wheel. The results suggest that such a system design appears reasonable in order to enhance drivers SA and DS while driving partially automated.

Effects of human-machine interaction mechanisms on situation awareness in partly automated driving

In recent years, one of the goals of driver assistance systems has been to relieve the driver of parts of his burden of driving. Current developments are able to take over full control of the vehicle in specific use cases. Automated driving in traffic jams is seen as the next step towards automated driving. One of the main challenges is ensuring the drivers ability to take back responsibility when being driven by the car. The assumption that drivers tend to perform secondary tasks creates a target conflict. Within this context, it is the aim of the current study to analyze the impacts of an exemplary secondary task and certain Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) mechanisms on the drivers level of situation awareness and the resulting driving safety. The implemented HMI mechanisms are a “drivers safety device” and a “video image”. While it is hypothesized that the secondary task has a negative influence on situation awareness, the HMI mechanisms effect is supposed to be positive. In addition, the overall users acceptance will also be analyzed. The results show that the implemented drivers safety device has no effect on situation awareness but is still able to support driving safety by assisting the driver in the execution of actions. The video image has a positive effect on situation awareness but because the complacency-effect is enhanced its effect on driving safety is negligible. As assumed, the secondary task has a negative impact on situation awareness and driving safety.

Approaches of User-Centered Interaction Development for Highly Automated Vehicles in Traffic-Jam Scenarios

In the recent years one of the goals of driver assistance systems has been to disburden the driver of parts of the driving task. Current developments are able to take over full control of the vehicle in specific use cases. One of the main challenges is to maintain the driver’s ability to take back the responsibility while being driven by the car. As it is assumed that the driver’s main benefit of such systems is the possibility to perform secondary tasks, a target conflict comes up. This paper describes a systematic approach to derive new ways of interaction between the driver and the automated vehicle. Traffic jam situations are chosen as the example situational context for this paper since they are one of the first expected use cases for automated driver assistance systems. By incorporating knowledge of experts of interdisciplinary fields in an innovation workshop, multiple points of view towards the given problem are enabled. For good rated ideas the generalized functional principle is formulated which describes how the user is kept aware of his supervision task. The resulting functional examples are decoupled from the initial ideas by deriving them only from these principles.