Shadan Sadeghian Borojeni

Assisting Drivers with Ambient Take-Over Requests in Highly Automated Driving

Take-over situations in highly automated driving occur when drivers have to take over vehicle control due to automation shortcomings. Due to high visual processing demand of the driving task and time limitation of a take-over maneuver, appropriate user interface designs for take-over requests (TOR) are needed. In this paper, we propose applying ambient TORs, which address the peripheral vision of a driver. Conducting an experiment in a driving simulator, we tested a) ambient displays as TORs, b) whether contextual information could be conveyed through ambient TORs, and c) if the presentation pattern (static, moving) of the contextual TORs has an effect on take-over behavior. Results showed that conveying contextual information through ambient displays led to shorter reaction times and longer times to collision without increasing the workload. The presentation pattern however, did not have an effect on take-over performance.

COMPANION -- Towards Co-operative Platoon Management of Heavy-Duty Vehicles

The objective of the EU project COMPANION is to develop co-operative mobility technologies for supervised vehicle platooning, in order to improve fuel efficiency and safety for goods transport. The potential social and environmental benefits inducted by heavy-duty vehicle platoons have been largely proven. However, until now, the creation, coordination, and operation of such platoons have been mostly neglected. In addition, the regulation and standardization of coordinated platooning, together with its acceptance by the end-users and the society need further attention and research. In this paper we give an overview over the project and present the architecture of the off-board and onboard platforms of the COMPANION cooperative platoon management system. Furthermore, the consortium reports on the first results of the human factors for platooning, legislative analysis of platooning aspects, clustering and optimization of platooning plans and prediction of congestion due to planned special events. Finally, we present the method of validation of the system via simulation and trials.

Feel the Movement: Real Motion Influences Responses to Take-over Requests in Highly Automated Vehicles

Take-over requests (TORs) in highly automated vehicles are cues that prompt users to resume control. TORs however, are often evaluated in non-moving driving simulators. This ignores the role of motion, an important source of information for users who have their eyes off the road while engaged in non-driving related tasks. We ran a user study in a moving-base driving simulator to investigate the effect of motion on TOR responses. We found that with motion, user responses to TORs vary depending on the road context where TORs are issued. While previous work showed that participants are fast to respond to urgent cues, we show that this is true only when TORs are presented on straight roads. Urgent cues issued on curved roads elicit slower responses than non-urgent cues on curved roads. Our findings indicate that TORs should be designed to be aware of road context to accommodate natural user responses.

Towards Adaptive Ambient In-Vehicle Displays and Interactions: Insights and Design Guidelines from the 2015 AutomotiveUI Dedicated Workshop

Informing a driver of a vehicle’s changing state and environment is a major challenge that grows with the introduction of in-vehicle assistant and infotainment systems. Even in the age of automation, the human will need to be in the loop for monitoring, taking over control, or making decisions. In these cases, poorly designed systems could lead to needless attentional demands imparted on the driver, taking it away from the primary driving task. Existing systems are offering simple and often unspecific alerts, leaving the human with the demanding task of identifying, localizing, and understanding the problem. Ideally, such systems should communicate information in a way that conveys its relevance and urgency. Specifically, information useful to promote driver safety should be conveyed as effective calls for action, while information not pertaining to safety (therefore less important) should be conveyed in ways that do not jeopardize driver attention. Adaptive ambient displays and peripheral interactions have the potential to provide superior solutions and could serve to unobtrusively present information, to shift the driver’s attention according to changing task demands, or enable a driver to react without losing the focus on the primary task. In order to build a common understanding across researchers and practitioners from different fields, we held a “Workshop on Adaptive Ambient In-Vehicle Displays and Interactions” at the AutomotiveUI‘15 conference. In this chapter, we discuss the outcomes of this workshop, provide examples of possible applications now or in the future and conclude with challenges in developing or using adaptive ambient interactions.

1st Workshop on Situational Awareness in Semi-Automated Vehicles

This workshop will focus on the problem of occupant and vehicle situational awareness with respect to automated vehicles when the driver must take over control. It will explore the future of fully automated and mixed traffic situations where vehicles are assumed to be operating at level 3 or above. In this case, all critical driving functions will be handled by the vehicle with the possibility of transitions between manual and automated driving modes at any time. This creates a driver environment where, unlike manual driving, there is no direct intrinsic motivation for the driver to be aware of the traffic situation at all times. Therefore, it is highly likely that when such a transition occurs, the driver will not be able to transition either safely or within an appropriate period of time. This workshop will address this challenge by inviting experts and practitioners from the automotive and related domains to explore concepts and solutions to increase, maintain and transfer situational awareness in semi-automated vehicles.

Peripheral Light Cues for In-Vehicle Task Resumption

The increasing amount of in-vehicle information systems has led to handling multiple tasks simultaneously. This increases mental workload and consequently causes interruptions and distraction from driving. In this paper, we propose applying peripheral light cues to support in-vehicle task resumption. We ran a driving simulator study in which we tested the effect of peripheral light cues on task resumption. Results showed that, during the presence of cues, users required less time to resume the interrupted task and made fewer errors at resumption. Moreover, participants found the cues to be helpful for retrieval of their deferred intentions, and eased resumption.

Design of a Human-Machine Interface for Truck Platooning

Despite the advantages that truck platooning has for fuel consumption, road safety, and use of existing road infrastructure, it does not simplify the job for the drivers. Truck drivers have to maintain a reasonable level of situation awareness while having a very limited vision of the road and dealing with considerable amount of information. This paper presents the first iteration of the development process of a platooning human-machine interface (HMI). The results indicate what information is required to be presented to the drivers at each phase of platooning.

PlatoonPal: User-Centered Development and Evaluation of an Assistance System for Heavy-Duty Truck Platooning

Truck platooning has advantages for fuel consumption, road safety, and use of the existing road infrastructure. However, it does not simplify the job of truck drivers who reportedly fear driving in close distance and mistrust the automation. Prior work indicates that a platooning assistant system can help overcoming these issues. However, there are no practical experiences with on-the-road platooning that shed light on how drivers perceive and evaluate such a system. In this work, we close this gap and present PlatoonPal, a platooning assistance system which we rigorously developed in a user centered way. We further present the results of a field test with three platooning trucks where drivers used PlatoonPal under real conditions. The results show that drivers are positive using the system and preferred information related closely to the current situation. We conclude the paper with guidelines for the future development of assistance systems for platooning.

Towards a Tangible Storytelling Kit for Exploring Emotions with Children

A key aspect of children»s development is the ability to manage personal feelings, understand others» feelings and needs, and interact positively with others. Storytelling is one approach to help children develop emotional literacy and deal with their own feelings constructively. To facilitate and complement this process, we developed an interactive storytelling prototype to help children and parents explore emotional situations. Specifically, the tangible modular toolkit, enables the re-creation of different narratives using a multi-modal user interface. We evaluated the preliminary prototype with parents and children to get feedback on the design and to help us better understand the design space. Our findings revealed how children engaged with tangible storytelling, how they explored emotional states in narratives, and what challenges they faced. We also explored the routines and practices parents used and the issues they faced while helping their children express emotions more easily.

Interacting with Autonomous Vehicles: Learning from other Domains

The rise of evermore autonomy in vehicles and the expected introduction of self-driving cars have led to a focus on human interactions with such systems from an HCI perspective over the last years. Automotive User Interface researchers have been investigating issues such as transition control procedures, shared control, (over)trust, and overall user experience in automated vehicles. Now, it is time to open the research field of automated driving to other CHI research fields, such as Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI), aeronautics and space, conversational agents, or smart devices. These communities have been dealing with the interplay between humans and automated systems for more than 30 years. In this workshop, we aim to provide a forum to discuss what can be learnt from other domains for the design of autonomous vehicles. Interaction design problems that occur in these domains, such as transition control procedures, how to build trust in the system, and ethics will be discussed.