Paper Reading #19: Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction

Comments

Evin Schuchardt

Cindy Skach

Reference Information

Title: Local danger warnings for drivers: the effect of modality and level of assistance on driver reaction

Authors: Yujia Cao  University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
              Angela Mahr  German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Saarbrücken, Germany
              Sandro Castronovo  German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Saarbrücken, Germany
             Mariët Theune  Universtiy of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
            Christoph Stahl  University of the Saarland, Saarbrücken, Germany
             Christian A. Müller  German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Saarbrücken, Germany

Presentation Venue: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces ;
February 7-10, 2009;

Hong Kong, China

Summary

In this paper the authors discuss Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, and their use today. The user interface (the warning presentation), as the authors explain is "crucial to a successful danger avoidance". The authors have decided to perform a user study to investigate different types of warning presentations. This is mainly done by using a scenario of emergent road obstacles. The authors relate warning presentations with situation awarenes (SA) theory. Situation Awareness, the authors explain, has three hierarchical phases for a driver: perception of elements in the environment, interpretation and comprehension of the elements, and finally predicton of the future state of the environment.

The researchers considered two presentation factors: Modality, and Level of Assistance. Modality had 4 variants: speech warning, visual and speech warning with blinking cue, and visual warning with sound cue. The level of assistance varied with the presence or absence of Action Suggestions(i.e: change lanes’). For their experiment, the authors used simulation sofware that they put in a Mercedes-Benz. Scenes were projected of a highway with two lanes, with no "surrounding" vehicles. Visual warnings were displayed on a screen to the right of the steering wheel, and audio was fed through a speaker.  

The authors used different types of obstacles like fallen trees, rocks, lost cargo, or a broken-down vehicle appearing. These were described to the driver with the following parameters: type, location, distance from obstacle. Some setups they tested were:

Discussion

This paper presented interseting ideas. I was curious to know how one could test such a system, however the authors have managed a thorough experiment. The findings from the authors were interesting, and they corresponded to my predictions. As drivers often listen to music, I had a hard time seeing how to incorporate an auditory warning signal without disrupting a driver's listening experience. The researchers plan in the future to use a head-down display rather than a projected displayed on a vehicle's windshield.

• Visual warning with a blinking red bar
• Visual warning with an auditory signal
• Visual warning supplemented with speech
• Speech-only warnings

Results: Overall, the researchers found that adding warnings enhanced drivers' reaction time. For example, auditory warning aided in braking faster. As far as feedback from users, they expressed how they liked the assisstance provided, and found it useful. The authors also explained that a visual warning worked the best on drivers, and auditory warnings less so. The authors do explain, however, that a survery performed after their experiment revealed a preference for a beep rather than a bliking red bar, and that a visual warning without sound wasn't very popular.