Capturing cultural differences between UK and Malaysian drivers to inform the design of in-vehicle navigation systems

Attending to cultural diversity is important for products and technology intended for global placement, such as automobiles, yet many products (and associated interfaces) lack genuine cultural differentiation. For example, in-vehicle navigation systems are typically identical in form and function across world markets, differing only in the local language and map database. To capture and explore culturally-salient design factors, we utilised a scenario-based design methodology, involving 6 experienced drivers from the UK and Malaysia. Participants were asked to portray their ideal navigation system interface designs – by drawing pictograms and devising accompanying spoken messages – to direct drivers along 3 prescribed routes in the UK, Malaysia and Japan. Routes were presented using video and paper maps, with the order of presentation counterbalanced between groups; participants were not told in advance from which country each route was derived. Proposed designs highlight differences at a country level, which are consequently interpreted from a cultural perspective. For example, Malaysian drivers included a higher density of navigational elements in their designs, particularly in their home environment, compared to UK drivers. Malaysian drivers also created more incremental designs, particularly on the approach to a manoeuvre, suggesting a desire for greater navigational support at this point in the journey. Landmarks were consistently incorporated in designs, but differences were noted in cultural salience. Additionally, the phrasing of instructions (e.g. “go straight on”), nomenclature for road elements (e.g. ‘roundabout’) and distance declaration conventions (e.g. units) differed at a country level. The findings can be used to inform the design of culturally-attuned in-vehicle navigation systems

Driven to discussion: engaging drivers in conversation with a digital assistant as a countermeasure to passive task-related fatigue

Using a Wizard-of-Oz approach, we explored the effectiveness of engaging drivers in conversation with a digital assistant as an operational strategy to combat the symptoms of passive task-related fatigue. Twenty participants undertook two 30-minute drives in a medium-fidelity driving simulator between 13:00 and 16:30, when circadian and homeostatic influences naturally reduce alertness. Participants were asked to follow a lead-car travelling at a constant speed of 68mph, in a sparsely-populated UK motorway scenario. During one of the counterbalanced drives, participants were engaged in conversation by a digital assistant (‘Vid’). Results show that interacting with Vid had a positive effect on driving performance and arousal, evidenced by better lane-keeping, earlier response to a potential hazard situation, larger pupil diameter, and an increased spread of attention to the road-scene (i.e. fewer fixations concentrated on the road-centre indicating a lower incidence of ‘cognitive tunnelling’). Drivers also reported higher levels of alertness and lower sleepiness following the Vid drive. Subjective workload ratings suggest that drivers exerted less effort to ‘stay awake’ when engaged with Vid. The findings support the development and application of in-vehicle natural language interfaces, and can be used to inform the design of novel countermeasures for driver fatigue

Understanding the effects of peripheral vision and muscle memory on in-vehicle touchscreen interactions

It is important to gain a better understanding of how drivers interact with in-vehicle touchscreens to help design interfaces to minimise “eyes off road” time. The study aimed to investigate the relative effects of two interaction mechanisms (peripheral vision - PV and muscle memory - MM) shown to be relevant to visual behaviour when driving, on the time to press different sized buttons (small 6x6cm, medium 10x10cm, large 14x14cm) on an in-vehicle touchscreen. Twenty-five participants took part in a driving simulator study. They were presented with a single, white, square button on the touchscreen on 24 successive trials. For MM conditions, participants wore a pair of glasses that blocked their peripheral vision and for PV conditions they were asked to keep their focus on the vehicle in front throughout. Results showed that task time gradually decreased for the trials when participants could only use MM. However, overall task time for MM conditions were significantly higher than for those in which PV was utilised, and participants rated the use of MM to be more difficult than PV. In contrast, results suggest that for interfaces that utilise peripheral visual processing the learning effect is not evident and operation times are constant over time. These findings indicate that in-vehicle touch screens should be designed to utilise peripheral vision for making simple button selections with reduced visual demand

Understanding the effects of peripheral vision and muscle memory on in-vehicle touchscreen interactions

It is important to gain a better understanding of how drivers interact with in-vehicle touchscreens to help design interfaces to minimise “eyes off road” time. The study aimed to investigate the relative effects of two interaction mechanisms (peripheral vision - PV and muscle memory - MM) shown to be relevant to visual behaviour when driving, on the time to press different sized buttons (small 6x6cm, medium 10x10cm, large 14x14cm) on an in-vehicle touchscreen. Twenty-five participants took part in a driving simulator study. They were presented with a single, white, square button on the touchscreen on 24 successive trials. For MM conditions, participants wore a pair of glasses that blocked their peripheral vision and for PV conditions they were asked to keep their focus on the vehicle in front throughout. Results showed that task time gradually decreased for the trials when participants could only use MM. However, overall task time for MM conditions were significantly higher than for those in which PV was utilised, and participants rated the use of MM to be more difficult than PV. In contrast, results suggest that for interfaces that utilise peripheral visual processing the learning effect is not evident and operation times are constant over time. These findings indicate that in-vehicle touch screens should be designed to utilise peripheral vision for making simple button selections with reduced visual demand

Steering the conversation: a linguistic exploration of natural language interactions with a digital assistant during simulated driving

Given the proliferation of ‘intelligent’ and ‘socially-aware’ digital assistants embodying everyday mobile technology – and the undeniable logic that utilising voice-activated controls and interfaces in cars reduces the visual and manual distraction of interacting with in-vehicle devices – it appears inevitable that next generation vehicles will be embodied by digital assistants and utilise spoken language as a method of interaction. From a design perspective, defining the language and interaction style that a digital driving assistant should adopt is contingent on the role that they play within the social fabric and context in which they are situated. We therefore conducted a qualitative, Wizard-of-Oz study to explore how drivers might interact linguistically with a natural language digital driving assistant. Twenty-five participants drove for 10 min in a medium-fidelity driving simulator while interacting with a state-of-the-art, high-functioning, conversational digital driving assistant. All exchanges were transcribed and analysed using recognised linguistic techniques, such as discourse and conversation analysis, normally reserved for interpersonal investigation. Language usage patterns demonstrate that interactions with the digital assistant were fundamentally social in nature, with participants affording the assistant equal social status and high-level cognitive processing capability. For example, participants were polite, actively controlled turn-taking during the conversation, and used back-channelling, fillers and hesitation, as they might in human communication. Furthermore, participants expected the digital assistant to understand and process complex requests mitigated with hedging words and expressions, and peppered with vague language and deictic references requiring shared contextual information and mutual understanding. Findings are presented in six themes which emerged during the analysis – formulating responses; turn-taking; back-channelling, fillers and hesitation; vague language; mitigating requests and politeness and praise. The results can be used to inform the design of future in-vehicle natural language systems, in particular to help manage the tension between designing for an engaging dialogue (important for technology acceptance) and designing for an effective dialogue (important to minimise distraction in a driving context)

Crowdsourcing good landmarks for in-vehicle navigation systems

Augmenting navigation systems with landmarks has been posited as a method of improving the effectiveness of the technology and enhancing drivers’ engagement with the environment. However, good navigational landmarks are both laborious to collect and difficult to define. This research aimed to devise a game concept, which could be played by passengers in cars, and would collect useful landmark data as a by-product. The paper describes how a virtual graffiti tagging game concept was created and tested during on-road trials with 38 participants. The data collected in the road trials were then validated using a survey, in which 100 respondents assessed the quality of the landmarks collected and their potential for reuse in navigation applications. Players of the game displayed a consensus in choosing where to place their graffiti tags with over 30% of players selecting the same object to tag in 10 of the 12 locations. Furthermore, significant correlation was found between how highly landmarks were rated in the survey and how frequently they were tagged during the game. The research provides evidence that using crowdsourcing games to collect landmarks does not require large numbers of people, or extensive coverage of an area, to produce suitable candidate landmarks for navigation

How Will Drivers and Passengers Interact in Future Automated Vehicles?

The presence of one or more passengers has been shown to distract drivers during manual driving, with reported reductions in situational awareness, an increase in the risk of taking unsafe actions, and an increased risk of a fatal crash, particularly in the case of young drivers. However, the presence of a passenger during Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 3 conditional driving automation (SAE, 2021) has, to date, received no empirical attention. Building on previous studies funded by the RAC Foundation (Burnett et al., 2019; Shaw et al., 2020), we invited 18 driver/passenger pairings (12 of the passengers in which were also themselves qualified and experienced drivers) to undertake three authentic journeys in the Human Factors Research Group’s driving simulator at the University of Nottingham. As before, SAE Level 3 conditional driving automation was activated on the motorway, and drivers and passengers were free to undertake any activities they deemed acceptable while the vehicle was in control, with the aim of preserving important motivational aspects. Inspired by our previous work, the research questions posed by the current study were:1.What will drivers and passengers naturally do in future automated vehicles?2.What impact does the presence of a passenger have on the driving task – that is, during periods of automation and also during the resumption of the driving task?3.How does the presence of a passenger affect levels of situational awareness, workload, trust and acceptance

Regular spherical dust spacetimes

Physical (and weak) regularity conditions are used to determine and classify all the possible types of spherically symmetric dust spacetimes in general relativity. This work unifies and completes various earlier results. The junction conditions are described for general non-comoving (and non-null) surfaces, and the limits of kinematical quantities are given on all comoving surfaces where there is Darmois matching. We show that an inhomogeneous generalisation of the Kantowski-Sachs metric may be joined to the Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi metric. All the possible spacetimes are explicitly divided into four groups according to topology, including a group in which the spatial sections have the topology of a 3-torus. The recollapse conjecture (for these spacetimes) follows naturally in this approach.Comment: Minor improvements, additional references. Accepted by GR

Investigating the effect of urgency and modality of pedestrian alert warnings on driver acceptance and performance

Active safety systems have the potential to reduce the risk to pedestrians by warning the driver and/or taking evasive action to reduce the effects of or avoid a collision. However, current systems are limited in the range of scenarios they can address using primary control interventions, and this arguably places more emphasis in some situations on warning the driver so that they can take appropriate action in response to pedestrian hazards. In a counterbalanced experimental design, we varied urgency (‘when’) based on the time-to-collision (TTC) at which the warning was presented (with associated false-positive alarms, but no false negatives, or ‘misses’), and modality (‘how’) by presenting warnings using audio-only and audio combined with visual alerts presented on a HUD. Results from 24 experienced drivers, who negotiated an urban scenario during twelve 6.0-minute drives in a medium-fidelity driving simulator, showed that all warnings were generally rated ‘positively’ (using recognised subjective ‘acceptance’ scales), although acceptance was lower when warnings were delivered at the shortest (2.0s) TTC. In addition, drivers indicated higher confidence in combined audio and visual warnings in all situations. Performance (based on safety margins associated with critical events) varied significantly between warning onset times, with drivers first fixating their gaze on the hazard, taking their foot off the accelerator, applying their foot on the brake, and ultimately bringing the car to a stop further from the pedestrian when warnings were presented at the longest (5.0s) TTC. In addition, drivers applied the brake further from the pedestrian when combined audio and HUD warnings were provided (compared to audio-only), but only at 5.0s TTC. Overall, the study indicates a greater margin of safety associated with the provision of earlier warnings, with no apparent detriment to acceptance, despite relatively high false alarm rates at longer TTCs. Also, that drivers feel more confident with a warning system present, especially when it incorporates auditory and visual elements, even though the visual cue does not necessarily improve hazard localisation or driving performance beyond the advantages offered by auditory alerts alone. Findings are discussed in the context of the design, evaluation and acceptance of active safety systems