On-board HMI design for highly automated cars: how much information about an automated car‘s driving intentions does the ‘driver’ demand for acceptance?

Kurzfassung

Fragestellung: With the development of progressively automated cars, i.e., high and full automation respectively SAE levels 4 and 5, the role of a nowadays car driver executing the driving task or at least monitoring the automation and simultaneously the driving environment is turning into the future role of a mere user of the automated system. Prospectively, a car driver does not even have to serve as a fallback instance in cases of automated system failure. So the current primary task of driving manually will become increasingly irrelevant and the nowadays secondary tasks are turning into prospective primary tasks the user will be allowed to exclusively focus on. This raises the question of the amount of information conveyed by the on-board Human-Machine Interface (HMI) about the highly automated car’s driving intentions the ‘driver’ or to-be user needs for user acceptance. Untersuchungsdesign: N = 12 participants experienced a highly automated simulator drive in urban environments for two conditions (distracted vs. non-distracted). Subsequently, they completed usability ratings for HMI designs conveying different information richness about the car’s driving intention (e.g., next maneuver) in rather complex driving scenarios with more vs. less certainty with regard to traffic participants’ cooperation behaviors (left turn vs. parking space), and with different cooperation partners in traffic (other cars vs. pedestrians). Ergebnisse: Results indicate that users demand less information especially in distracted conditions and conditional upon gender. Limitationen: Findings must be validated in realistic automated driving beyond simulations for external validity. Theoretische/Praktische Implikationen: Results allow a refined user-centered adaptive HMI design for automated vehicles. Relevanz/Beitrag: Previous research on HMI design regarding lower automation levels has shown that drivers require different information respectively. The current study suggests an HMI design for future automation levels.