Title:
Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction
Reference:
Cao, Y., Mahr, A., Castronovo, S., Theune, M., Stahl, C., Muller, C. Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction. IUI '10. ACM, New York, NY. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1720004&CFID=5889600&CFTOKEN=71833395
Summary:
The researchers sought to find out what are the most influential, and thus safe, ways to communicate to vehicle drivers using Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). The study was focused on both modality factors (speech warning, visual plus speech warning, visual warning with blinking, and visual warning without sound cue) as well as the level of assistance, or whether or not action was prescribed or not. An experiment was designed in order to test these questions.
In the experiment, subject drivers were put in a car with a projected image on the front windshield (a digital projection of a road) and the ADAS was mounted on the dash. Drivers were to respond as they normally would in a driving situation. The ADAS would communicate to the driver before the actual obstacle entered the view in the windshield projection giving the subject time to adjust to the navigation system. The researchers recorded the behavior of the drivers in terms of obeying the ADAS, response times, and unsafe behavior.
In the control experiment, without ADAS, all but one subject showed unsafe behavior. The percentage of unsafe behavior with ADAS reduced from 19.1% to 1.4%. Thus safe driving could be enforced using this type of ADAS. Concerning modality, the combination of blinking lights with obstacles as well as speech provided the most usability for the user.
Future work includes actually projecting the images on the windshield rather than in the peripheral view of the driver.
The researchers sought to find out what are the most influential, and thus safe, ways to communicate to vehicle drivers using Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS). The study was focused on both modality factors (speech warning, visual plus speech warning, visual warning with blinking, and visual warning without sound cue) as well as the level of assistance, or whether or not action was prescribed or not. An experiment was designed in order to test these questions.In the experiment, subject drivers were put in a car with a projected image on the front windshield (a digital projection of a road) and the ADAS was mounted on the dash. Drivers were to respond as they normally would in a driving situation. The ADAS would communicate to the driver before the actual obstacle entered the view in the windshield projection giving the subject time to adjust to the navigation system. The researchers recorded the behavior of the drivers in terms of obeying the ADAS, response times, and unsafe behavior.
In the control experiment, without ADAS, all but one subject showed unsafe behavior. The percentage of unsafe behavior with ADAS reduced from 19.1% to 1.4%. Thus safe driving could be enforced using this type of ADAS. Concerning modality, the combination of blinking lights with obstacles as well as speech provided the most usability for the user.
Future work includes actually projecting the images on the windshield rather than in the peripheral view of the driver.
Discussion:
From the books that we have been reading for class, it seems as though all of these peripherals in vehicles could be causing more distraction than production. It would be interesting to add other distractions to the driver outside of the main communication of this system. Possibly a passenger to talk to would show different results. The use of a projected view of a road on the windshield could be a poor way of representing actual situations. I think further testing should be done on a closed obstacle course which simulated a similar situation.
From the books that we have been reading for class, it seems as though all of these peripherals in vehicles could be causing more distraction than production. It would be interesting to add other distractions to the driver outside of the main communication of this system. Possibly a passenger to talk to would show different results. The use of a projected view of a road on the windshield could be a poor way of representing actual situations. I think further testing should be done on a closed obstacle course which simulated a similar situation.
I agree that projecting the view on the windshield isn't the best way to test this, but I thought it was a neat approach. I like your idea of testing the system on a closed course. Maybe the obstacles could be inflatable objects scaled to the right size or something...
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of adding other distractions, perhaps adding music to the testing environment or people talking to you. It's really interesting to see how the numbers dropped with the use of ADAS.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, our readings have pointed out that all these things being added to cars has only added to the distraction, and our brain doesn't do well with switching between the task of driving and the task of interacting with the car. If I hadn't read that though, I would say this is a very cool idea and could prove to be very useful.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that it's a visual, but I'm not clear on what steps they took to make it informative without being a distraction.
ReplyDeleteI second J.I. Penick's observation. Though I liked this paper, I thought some of the warning presentations would be distracting.
ReplyDelete