Secondary task and situation awareness, a mobile application for conditionally automated vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are developing rapidly and will lead to a significant change in the driver's role: s/he will have to move from the role of actor to the role of supervisor. Indeed, s/he will soon be able to perform a secondary task but s/he must be able to take over control when a critical situation is not managed by the driving system. The role of new interfaces and interactions within the vehicle is important to take into account. This article describes the design of an application that provides the driver with information about the environment perceived by the vehicle. This application is displayed as split screen on a tablet by which a secondary task can be performed. The results of initial experiment showed that the participants correctly identified all the factors limiting the proper functioning of the driving system while performing a secondary task on the tablet.