Abstract
This study investigates the impact of peripheral visual information in alleviating motion sickness when engaging in non-driving tasks in fully automated driving. A peripheral visual feedforward system (PVFS) was designed providing information about the upcoming actions of the automated car in the periphery of the occupant’s attention. It was hypothesized that after getting the information from the PVFS, the users’ situation awareness is improved while motion sickness is prevented from developing. The PVFS was also assumed not to increase mental workload nor interrupt the performance of the non-driving tasks. The study was accomplished on an actual road using a Wizard of Oz technique deploying an instrumented car that behaved like a real fully automated car. The test rides using the current setup and methodology indicated high consistency in simulating the automated driving. Results showed that with PVFS, situation awareness was enhanced and motion sickness was lessened while mental workload was unchanged. Participants also indicated high hedonistic user experience with the PVFS. While providing peripheral information showed positive results, further study such as delivering richer information and active head movement are possibly needed.
Highlights
In fully automated driving, human drivers will no longer drive at the operational level but rather only within the strategic level according to Michon’s definition level of driving (Michon, 1985)
Since the Motion Sickness Dose Value (MSDV) in both lateral and longitudinal are the directions of interest due to the fact that motion sickness (MS) develops at low-frequency horizontal oscillations (ISO, 1997; Turner & Griffin, 1999), only MSDVs in x- and y-direction were plotted
The automated driving test rides, which were simulated by the driving wizard using Mobility Lab (ML), managed to yield high consistency as well as provided sufficient dosage to make participants experience mild motion sickness (MS)
Summary
Human drivers will no longer drive at the operational level but rather only within the strategic level according to Michon’s definition level of driving (Michon, 1985). Michon distinguished three levels of driving: operational, tactical, and strategic. The operational level involves control tasks like braking and accelerating. The tactical level requires planning and controlled actions like overtaking another car. Having a fully automated vehicle (AV), a human driver only decides on the final destination, and the vehicle will handle all the driving tasks and decisions. Based on a study done by Schoettle and Sivak (2014) on users from China, India, Japan, US, UK, and Australia on what kind of activity one would like to do inside an AV, they found that roughly 50–60% of the respondents imagined themselves doing non-driving tasks (NDT) such as
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