Supervising the self driving car: situation awareness and fatigue during automated driving
The capacity for human drivers to resume control from an automated vehicle remains a central focus of human factors research. Physiological measures promise to allow the vehicle system to determine when a driver is in a ready state for transition of control, particularly for level 3 automation and above. We employ an adapted measure of Situation Awareness (SA) to assess the quality of driver SA following an extended period of simulated level 3 automated driving. It is hypothesised that a within subjects design will demonstrate increasing passive fatigue to be predictive of reduced SA following a takeover request. Participants were also randomly allocated to one of two separate conditions in which supervising drivers were either permitted to, or prohibited from the use of non driving related tasks (NDRT) during automated driving, to investigate a potential avenue for targeted SA enhancement through deliberate NDRT engagement. Preliminary results provide tentative support for our hypotheses.
AutomotiveUI