Potential Solutions to Human Factors Challenges in Road Vehicle Automation

Abstract

Recent research on automated vehicle technologies points to the need to consider drivers' interactions with road vehicle automation, and to apply Human Factors (HF) principles and guidelines to support timely and safe transfer of control to and from automation. This chapter elaborates on a Human Factors breakout session at the 2015 "Automated Vehicles Symposium" that addressed issues on how humans will interact with automated technologies, particularly considering that a wide variety of designs are either under development or already deployed. A number of key human factors design challenges are outlined including that automation is a cost-benefit trade-off where reduced human performance is a cost; that there are different transfer of control concerns for different levels of automation; that the driver may not provide suitable fallback performance of the dynamic driving task; that the better the automation, the less attention drivers will pay to traffic and the system, and the less capable they will be to resume control; and that the driver may be "out-of-the-loop"-may not monitor the driving environment or be aware of the status of automation. Two suggestions to solve the human factors issues are proposed: (1) to work within given constraints, to design the best we can, according to the given definitions of levels 2 and 3 vehicle automation, or (2) to advise against developing level 3 automation and instead advocate two levels of automation: shared driving wherein the driver understands his/her role to be responsible and in control for driving, and delegated driving in which there is no expectation that the driver will be a fallback for performing the dynamic driving task.

Great expectations: a predictive processing account of automobile driving

“…In Level 3, the driver is not required to monitor the driving environment but is expected to respond appropriately to a request to intervene. In a Level 4 AD function, responsibility for safe operation lies solely with the vehicle, as long as the autonomous driving occurs in certain, pre-defined, scenarios (Seppelt and Victor, 2016).…”

“…Key human factors challenges related to AD include the role of the human during automated driving, the transfer of control between the AD function and the driver, and the design of human machine interfaces (HMIs) that support system transparency (e.g., communicates system limitations and capabilities; Gibson et al, 2016;Seppelt and Victor, 2016). Here, we explore how predictive processing may provide a novel perspective on these challenges, focusing on three key concepts that are frequently used in discussions about human factors challenges for AD: (1) drivers' mental models, (2) trust in automation and (3) being in or out of "the loop".…”

“…A third concept, abundant in discussions on AD, is being "in or out of the loop" (Endsley and Kiris, 1995;Seppelt and Victor, 2016). For example, being in the loop during automated driving generally refers to monitoring the driving environment and being aware of the status of the automation.…”

How to keep drivers engaged while supervising driving automation? A literature survey and categorisation of six solution areas

“…The proposed solution areas overlap with many of the compounded review conclusions above from Stanton et al (2001), Saffarian, De Winter, and Happee (2012), Casner, Hutchins, and Norman (2016) and Seppelt and Victor (2016). From the present literature survey, what is added is a grouping framework that might more fully encapsulate the conclusions of empirical results from both the broad body of human factors, ergonomics, and learning theory as well as human driving automation interaction research.…”

“…Casner, Hutchins, and Norman (2016) also conclude that designers of driver interfaces will not only have to make automated processes more transparent, simple and clear, they might also periodically involve the driver with manual control to keep up their skills, wakefulness and/or attentiveness. Lastly, Seppelt and Victor (2016) suggest new designs (better feedback and environment attention-orienting cues) as well as 'shared driving wherein the driver understands his/her role to be responsible and in control for driving' and/or fully responsible driving automation that operates without any expectation that the human driver will serve as a fall-back.…”