Publication

Final Report A-0031

Since the rapid ourish of automobiles in the 21st century, the need for easier and faster transportation by means of automobiles has risen. In recent years, driving has ranged from being a daily routine task to a sport. This has given rise to adapt to the needs for a more ecient automobile. A driving task can simply be dened as all the activities that the driver engages in, so as to accomplish the aim of mobility. In the past, the driver had to do all of the tasks that contributed to the driving task. With the invent and advancement of technology, systems have been developed which assist the driver in accomplishing this driving task. One example of such an assistance system is a steering assistance system. A steering assistance system assists the driver to keep the vehicle in lane i.e., to maintain the lateral control of the vehicle. Nevertheless, such a steering assistance system is subject to failure and hence there is need to understand how humans react when such a failure occurs. Specifically, when a steering assistance system fails, the most common effect is the vehicle departing from the lane, if the driver does not regain control of the vehicle. In this experiment, such a steering automation failure is simulated using a joystick control and an eye tracker is used to study the glance behaviour of the drivers when such a failure occurs. Another objective of this experiment was to understand if there existed any relation between the driver's visual strategies and their ability to regain control of the vehicle. Data was collected from participants who drove an instrumented car on the AstaZero proving ground in Boras, Sweden. Data from various sensors in the car was collected and eye xation points from the eye tracker has been used to analyze how driver respond during such steering assistance system failures. An interesting observation was that the drivers' interaction with the steering was directly related to their level of trust on the system. Another observation from the driver's glance behaviour shows that the driver focused lesser on the road when the vehicle was in the steering assistance mode rather than in manual driving mode, but after the failure the driver's gaze was more focused on the road ahead.

Author(s)
Abhishek Purushothaman, Adarsh Manjunath, Xiaomi Yang, Motasim Imtiyaz, Rashmi Ganjagunte Somashekhar
Research area
Systems for accident prevention and AD
Publication type
Project report
Year of publication
2019
Document