Recommendations Supporting Situation Awareness in Partially Automated Driver Assistance Systems

It is believed that automated driving is able to fulfill the demand for comfort and safety in traffic. Recent developments have been able to take over all parts of the driving task in specific situations. However, it remains to the driver to monitor the system's behavior upon errors and to intervene in the case of critical situations. On account of the automation, the driver may not be able to overlook the whole situation in the same way he would do while driving manually. In addition to that, the driver's motivation to perform secondary tasks while being driven enhances these challenges. The research activities presented in this paper are concentrated on the development and the evaluation of certain human-machine interface (HMI) mechanisms. It is hypothesized that such mechanisms have a positive impact on driver's situation awareness (SA) and resulting driving safety (DS). The evaluation of these mechanisms occurred in a driving simulator study. Based on the evaluation results, a system presenting the secondary task's display in the vehicle's head-up display is proposed. Thereby, the driver is expected to be able to keep the vehicle's environment in his peripheral field of view without being distracted too much. At the same time, relevant elements to operate the secondary task should be located on the steering wheel. This is expected to reduce the time needed for steering reactions, as drivers keep at least one hand on the steering wheel. The results suggest that such a system design appears reasonable in order to enhance driver's SA and DS while driving partially automated.