Effects of In-vehicle Information on Driver Blink Characteristics and Workload

Ling Wu,Tong Zhu,Weihua Zhao,Haoxue Liu

doi:10.22158/asir.v3n3p166

Abstract

A real-vehicle experiment was carried out to study the effects of in-vehicle information on driver workload, during which data of the driver blink duration and frequency were collected to check for discrepancies among drivers with and without vehicle navigation usage. In the meanwhile, the blink characteristics of drivers with vehicle navigation device mounted at three different positions were explored through image prompt or image & sound multi-channel simultaneous prompt. Experimental results showed that when the data of blink with a duration of 0-200ms was distributed at a 10ms interval, the driver blink count distribution curve shows obvious bimodal characteristics. The peak of blink with 50-60ms duration was lower than that with 10-20ms duration when vehicle navigation was not used, and higher when vehicle navigation was used. The difference between medium and long blinks was not significant when the navigation device was mounted at different positions, yet the short blinks showed a significant difference. The peaks of blink count without voice navigation were all greater than those with voice navigation. In particular, without voice navigation, the short blinks increased obviously, and the medium blinks increased relatively, but the long blinks remained almost unchanged. The above results indicate that the driver workload was greater when using vehicle navigation. When the navigation device is installed in position B, the driver workload reaches the minimum. Using voice navigation could reduce driver workload.

Highlights

Driving workload is an important factor affecting driving performance
The proportion of blinks with a duration of 10-20ms and 50-60ms was significantly higher than others, a feature that was not observed at 50ms intervals
This study collected the driver blink duration and frequency data through a controlled real-vehicle road experiment, and realized three different comparisons, namely, comparing the blink characteristics, with and without navigator, with navigator mounted in three different positions, and with image prompts only and image-voice multi-channel prompts

Summary

Introduction

Driving workload is an important factor affecting driving performance. As intelligent transportation systems have been developing rapidly in recent years, in-vehicle information system (IVIS) (Benedetto et al, 2011) has been widely used to provide drivers with entertainment, route guidance, and real-time road conditions, even taxi order and payment information (Gonçalves, Rossetti, & Olaverri-Monreal, 2012). Only a few studies have been conducted on the relationship between in-vehicle information and driver workload, even fewer based on a real driving experiment. 2.2 Experimental Design Variables in the experiment included: with or without in-vehicle information service, equipment mounting position, and information prompt methods. In stage 3-8, data under different mounting positions and information prompt modes were collected, respectively. 2.3 Experimental Process The drivers tested the cars and the IVIS before the experiment started, and wore the eye trackers. According to the reference 1, increase in the short blink and the medium blink indicated a rise of driving workload, which proved that the driving workload went up when IVIS was used to assist driving on an unknown path It showed that acquiring information from inside of the brain was more efficient than from the outside.

Conclusion

Findings

Conclusions