On-Road Assessment of Driver Mode Awareness of Assisted and Automated Driving

Abstract

Increasingly, today’s vehicles offer Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Level 2 (L2) technology, and a limited number of SAE Level 3 (L3) automated driving systems (ADSs) are being developed. Since L3 ADSs can operate in L2 and manual driving, drivers’ correct mode awareness is essential. To investigate driver’s mode awareness after transitions between modes, an on-road experiment was conducted using a Wizard-of-Oz method to simulate Assisted Driving (L2-like) and Automated Driving (L3/L4-like). A total of 36 drivers completed the on-road experiment. Participants experienced periods of manual driving, assisted driving, automated driving, and transitions between these modes. After each transition, participants’ mode awareness was measured. It was hypothesized that drivers’ mode awareness would increase with system exposure over the planned automated driving periods. Results showed that drivers exhibited declarative mode awareness during both Assisted (ASD) and Automated Driving (AD) modes.

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“…The authors would like to thank Sheldon Russell for his assistance with the study conception and design and data collection. Please note that a portion of the content presented in this publication originally appeared in NB’s Master’s thesis ( Britten, 2021 ).…”