Effects of Visual Latency on Vehicle Driving Behavior

Abstract

Using mixed reality in vehicles provides a potential alternative to using driving simulators when studying driver-vehicle interaction. However, virtual reality systems introduce latency in the visual system that may alter driving behavior, which, in turn, results in questionable validity. Previous studies have mainly focused on visual latency as a separate phenomenon. In this work, latency is studied from a task-dependent viewpoint to investigate how participants’ driving behavior changed with increased latency. In this study, the investigation was performed through experiments in which regular drivers were subjected to different levels of visual latency while performing a simple slalom driving task. The drivers’ performances were recorded and evaluated in both lateral and longitudinal directions along with self-assessment questionnaires regarding task performance and difficulty. All participants managed to complete the driving tasks successfully, even under high latency conditions, but were clearly affected by the increased visual latency. The results suggest that drivers compensate for longer latencies by steering more and increasing the safety margins but without reducing their speed.

The Effects of Visual and Control Latency on Piloting a Quadcopter Using a Head-Mounted Display

“…However, operating vehicles using only HMDs [1][2][3][4] seem to give people a more direct, immersive and intuitive way of control than joint use of computer monitors and joysticks. In addition, researchers have also investigated the effects of latency on driving cars [15] and piloting helicopters [16]. However, no research has been conducted to study the effects of various levels of latency on head motion controlled quadcopters or other types of vehicles.…”

“…Blissing et al [15] investigated the effects of visual latency on driving performance through an experiment conducted on real cars. Participants wore see-through HMDs modified from an Oculus Rift DK2 while driving.…”

Towards an Evolved Immersive Experience: Exploring 5G- and Beyond-Enabled Ultra-Low-Latency Communications for Augmented and Virtual Reality

“…Such a new form of latency measurement through human cognitive performance can be reliable and comparable to hardware-instrumentation-based measurement. A standardized canonical test was introduced to perform cognitive latency tests to measure multiple latencies [ 69 ] successfully, which included the photon-to-photon latency and the tracking latency. The test was performed on four HMDs, where the first device was an ad hoc system, known as Prism, and the rest of them were the Oculus Quest, which is an untethered VR system, the Oculus Rift S, and the Valve Index, which are both tethered VR HMDs.…”

Immersive View and Interface Design for Teleoperated Aerial Manipulation

“…Additionally, many users mentioned that the video feed from the drone had increased latency and delay when compared to the non-VR condition. Whilst this wasn't confirmed through system diagnosis, it is possible that operators in the VR interface were influenced by natural connection issues, as this would not only impact teleoperation capabilities but also affect immersion in the interface [36], [37]. Finally, it was mentioned that the control scheme for the VR interface felt more delayed than the traditional interface, which could explain the higher numbers of collisions and crashes.…”