Phased control transitions in highly automated vehicles

Nijs Bouman (2019) coached by Marieke Martens

Description

My objective is to design an interface to improve transitioning vehicle control from computer to human. I focus on increasing the driver’s understanding and take-over performance by allowing the driver to prepare for a possible take-over.

A highly automated vehicle is able to drive itself most of the time, and doesn’t require a human to monitor the environment. However, if the situation changes, the user might be required to take over, which can be difficult. A possible solution is to add a ‘monitoring phase’: a transition phase where the human monitors the environment, thus understands what is going on before a take-over is required.

Do driver take-over understanding and performance improve by adding a monitoring phase in-between full automation and a take-over request?

Five design iterations, a UX test, and a user study resulted in a final design proposal, and research conclusion.