Assisting Drivers with Ambient Take-Over Requests in Highly Automated Driving

Take-over situations in highly automated driving occur when drivers have to take over vehicle control due to automation shortcomings. Due to high visual processing demand of the driving task and time limitation of a take-over maneuver, appropriate user interface designs for take-over requests (TOR) are needed. In this paper, we propose applying ambient TORs, which address the peripheral vision of a driver. Conducting an experiment in a driving simulator, we tested a) ambient displays as TORs, b) whether contextual information could be conveyed through ambient TORs, and c) if the presentation pattern (static, moving) of the contextual TORs has an effect on take-over behavior. Results showed that conveying contextual information through ambient displays led to shorter reaction times and longer times to collision without increasing the workload. The presentation pattern however, did not have an effect on take-over performance.