Too sick to drive : how motion sickness severity impacts human performance

There are multiple concerns surrounding the development and rollout of self-driving cars. One issue has largely gone unnoticed - the adverse effects of motion sickness as induced by self-driving cars. The literature suggests conditionally, highly and fully autonomous vehicles will increase the onset likelihood and severity of motion sickness. Previous research has shown motion sickness can have a significant negative impact on human performance. This paper uses a simulator study design with 51 participants to assess if the scale of motion sickness is a predictor of human performance degradation. This paper finds little proof that subjective motion sickness severity is an effective indicator of the scale of human performance degradation. The performance change of participants with lower subjective motion sickness is mostly statistically indistinguishable from those with higher subjective sickness. Conclusively, those with even acute motion sickness may be just as affected as those with higher sickness, considering human performance. Building on these results, it could indicate motion sickness should be a consideration for understanding user ability to regain control of a self-driving vehicle, even if not feeling subjectively unwell. Effectiveness of subjective scoring is discussed and future research is proposed to help ensure the successful rollout of self-driving vehicles

Predicting Takeover Performance in Conditionally Automated Driving

In conditionally automated driving, drivers decoupled from operational control of the vehicle have difficulty taking over control when requested. To address this challenge, we conducted a human-in-the-loop experiment wherein the drivers needed to take over control from an automated vehicle. We collected drivers’ physiological data and data from the driving environment, and based on which developed random forest models for predicting drivers’ takeover performance in real time. Drivers’ subjective ratings of their takeover performance were treated as the ground truth. The best random forest model had an accuracy of 70.2% and an F1-score of 70.1%. We also discussed the implications on the design of an adaptive in-vehicle alert system.University of Michigan McityNational Science FoundationPeer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153789/1/Du et al. 2020.pdfDescription of Du et al. 2020.pdf : Main Fil

Predicting Driver Takeover Performance and Designing Alert Systems in Conditionally Automated Driving

With the Society of Automotive Engineers Level 3 automation, drivers are no longer required to actively monitor driving environments, and can potentially engage in non-driving related tasks. Nevertheless, when the automation reaches its operational limits, drivers will have to take over control of vehicles at a moment’s notice. Drivers have difficulty with takeover transitions, as they become increasingly decoupled from the operational level of driving. In response to the takeover difficulty, existing literature has investigated various factors affecting takeover performance. However, not all the factors were studied comprehensively, and the results of some factors were mixed. Meanwhile, there is a lack of research on the development of computational models that predict drivers’ takeover performance using their physiological and driving environment data. Furthermore, current research on the design of in-vehicle alert systems suffers from methodological shortcomings and presents identical takeover warnings regardless of event criticality. To address these shortcomings, the goals of this dissertation were to (1) examine the effects of drivers' cognitive load, emotions, traffic density, and takeover request lead time on their driving behavioral (takeover timeliness and quality) and psychophysiological responses (eye movements, galvanic skin responses, and heart rate activities) to takeover requests; (2) develop computational models to predict drivers’ takeover performance using their physiological and driving environment data via machine learning algorithms; and (3) design in-vehicle alert systems with different display modalities and information types and evaluate the displays in different event criticality conditions via human-subject experiments. The results of three human-subject experiments showed that positive emotional valence led to smoother takeover behaviors. Only when drivers had low cognitive load, they had shorter takeover reaction time in high oncoming traffic conditions. High oncoming traffic led to higher collision risk. High speed led to higher collision risk and harsher takeover behaviors in lane changing scenarios, but engendered longer takeover reaction time and smoother takeover behaviors in lane keeping scenarios. Meanwhile, we developed a random forest model to predict drivers' takeover performance with an accuracy of 84.3% and an F1-score of 64.0%. Our model had finer granularity than and outperformed other machine learning models used in prior studies. The findings of alert system design studies showed that drivers had more anxiety with the why only information compared to the why + what will information when information was presented in the speech modality. They felt more prepared to take over control of the vehicle and had more preference for the combination of augmented reality and speech conditions than others when drivers were in high event criticality situations. This dissertation can add to the knowledge base about takeover response investigation, takeover performance prediction, and in-vehicle alert system design. The results will enhance the understanding of how drivers’ emotions, cognitive load, traffic density, and scenario type influence their takeover responses. The computational models for takeover performance prediction are underlying algorithms of in-vehicle monitoring systems in real-world applications. The findings will provide design recommendations to automated vehicle manufacturers on in-vehicle alert systems. This will ultimately enhance the interaction between drivers and automated vehicles and improve driving safety in intelligent transportation systems.PHDIndustrial & Operations EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169727/1/nadu_1.pd

Investigating Explanations in Conditional and Highly Automated Driving: The Effects of Situation Awareness and Modality

With the level of automation increases in vehicles, such as conditional and highly automated vehicles (AVs), drivers are becoming increasingly out of the control loop, especially in unexpected driving scenarios. Although it might be not necessary to require the drivers to intervene on most occasions, it is still important to improve drivers' situation awareness (SA) in unexpected driving scenarios to improve their trust in and acceptance of AVs. In this study, we conceptualized SA at the levels of perception (SA L1), comprehension (SA L2), and projection (SA L3), and proposed an SA level-based explanation framework based on explainable AI. Then, we examined the effects of these explanations and their modalities on drivers' situational trust, cognitive workload, as well as explanation satisfaction. A three (SA levels: SA L1, SA L2 and SA L3) by two (explanation modalities: visual, visual + audio) between-subjects experiment was conducted with 340 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results indicated that by designing the explanations using the proposed SA-based framework, participants could redirect their attention to the important objects in the traffic and understand their meaning for the AV system. This improved their SA and filled the gap of understanding the correspondence of AV's behavior in the particular situations which also increased their situational trust in AV. The results showed that participants reported the highest trust with SA L2 explanations, although the mental workload was assessed higher in this level. The results also provided insights into the relationship between the amount of information in explanations and modalities, showing that participants were more satisfied with visual-only explanations in the SA L1 and SA L2 conditions and were more satisfied with visual and auditory explanations in the SA L3 condition