Can haptic signals aid to solve ADAS limitations?

Abstract

The number of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) in the vehicle has continuously increased during the last years. There is, however, a lack of understanding in how this information can be better conveyed to the driver, in order to optimize its help. Drivers may become overexposed to visual information when driving, or acoustic alerts can be masked in noised environments. Moreover, if the user is not paying attention to the road or using headphones, visual and acoustic alerts would not be as efficient or desirable, but the key is the multimodal communication.Therefore, a study has been carried to evaluate the effectiveness of a new haptic and acoustic ADAS system comparing it to conventional visual ADAS. This new system is called Vibe system, that consists of a seat with haptic actuators and acoustic signals. In order to carry out the experiment, 20 subjects in ‘standard’ sleeping conditions and 10 in ‘sleep deprived’ conditions participated in the experiment. The experimentations were taken place in the dynamic driving simulator developed by the IBV’s Human Autonomous Vehicle (HAV). Users were immersed in driving tasks, in day and night conditions, with CARLA SW in the HAV simulator while several visual, auditive and haptic alerts appeared to simulate different ADAS of some of the most common vehicle brands. In every hazardous situation during the driving tasks, the following alerts were triggered: drowsiness, blind spot alert, overspeed alert and lane change. The driving behavior, the mental status and the user opinion of each user was gathered using telemetry, physiological signals and validated questionnaires such as TAM or SUS.In a general overview, there are barely no statistically significant difference in the main parameters between the haptic and the conventional visual ADAS evaluated, so the effect of each signal is similar in controlled conditions. Currently, the acceptance of traditional ADAS is slightly higher but haptic ADAS acceptance improves along sessions, even being a new technology.