News

Research car for autonomous fuctions, Wizard of Oz, visits DDI2018.

This Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) car has been used on public roads and test tracks to study automation. For example it was used in the four studies reported here http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0018720818788164 and here https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-94947-5_69. In these four test track experiments, the WoZ car was equipped with special, test-unique software which had self-driving capability to precisely follow the road, maintain speed, and keep a constant headway with highly-reliable driving performance on the AstaZero test track. Two test leaders rode along in the WoZ car: one who administered questionnaires and acted as an “interaction wizard” triggering messages and information, and another who acted as (backup) safety driver using the driving controls (e.g. steering wheel, pedals) in the center back seat.

The phrase Wizard of Oz (originally OZ Paradigm) has come into common usage in the fields of experimental psychology, human factors, ergonomics, linguistics, and usability engineering to describe a testing or iterative design methodology wherein an experimenter (the “wizard”), in a laboratory setting, simulates the behavior of a theoretical intelligent computer application (often by going into another room and intercepting all communications between participant and system). Sometimes this is done with the participant’s a-priori knowledge and sometimes it is a low-level deceit employed to manage the participant’s expectations and encourage natural behaviors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_of_Oz_experiment