Effects of Multitasking on Drivability Through CAN-Bus Analysis

Abstract

Humans try their best to maximize their abilities to handle various kinds of tasks, be it physical, auditory, visual, or cognitive. The same is true when a person is driving a vehicle—while driving is the primary task of a driver, he/she will attempt to accomplish secondary tasks such as speaking over a cell phone, checking and creating text messages, and selecting music or viewing/accessing news. Though the driver’s primary intention is a safe drive, as previous studies have shown (Wilde, Target risk: dealing with the danger of death, disease and damage in everyday decisions, 1994), drivers elevate their risk-taking ability to an optimal level. While performing various tasks this balance between drivability and risk taking can vary, leading to driver distraction and possible accidents. The automotive industry has taken special care to reduce the complexity of operating in-vehicle infotainment systems. Better ergonomics and haptic (tactile) systems have helped achieve comfortable usability. Advances in driver assistance systems have also resulted in increased use of audio-based feedback (Forlines et al. Comparison between spoken queries and menu-based interfaces for in-car digital music selection, 2005) from navigation and other systems. It is very important to understand how these secondary tasks and feedback systems affect the driver and his/her drivability . This chapter focuses on understanding how drivers react to various secondary tasks. An analysis on driving performance using vehicle dynamics and sensor information via CAN-bus shows interesting results on how performing secondary tasks affect some drivers. Previous studies (Sathyanarayana et al. Driver behavior analysis and route recognition by hidden Markov models, 2008 I.E.E.E International Conference on Vehicular Electronics and Safety, 2008) have shown how maneuvers can be segmented into preparatory, maneuver, and recovery phases. Initial results presented in this chapter show a similar trend in how drivers handle secondary tasks. Even if secondary tasks do not distract the driver, results show driver variations in anticipation or preparation for the task, performing the task itself, and post completion (recovery) of the task.