A New Approach to Studying Sleep in Autonomous Vehicles: Simulating the Waking Situation

In this paper, we present a novel methodology for simulating the physical and cognitive demands that individuals experience when waking from sleep. Better understanding this scenario has significant implications for research in Autonomous Vehicles (AV), where prior research has shown that many drivers would like to sleep while the vehicle is in operation. Our experiment setup replicates the waking situation in two ways: (1) Subjects wear a sleep shade (physical demand) for 3 sessions (5min, 8min, and 11min) in randomly assigned order, after which (2) they view a screen (cognitive demand) that fades from blurry to clear over a 10s-timeframe. We compared subjects' experiences in-study to the physical and cognitive conditions they experience when waking in real life. Our experiment setup was highly rated in effectiveness and appropriateness for alternating sleeping situation. Findings will be utilized as scenario design in future AV studies and can be adopted in other fields, as well.