Continuous-time feedback device to enhance situation awareness during take-over requests in automated driving conditions

Conditional automation may require drivers of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) to turn their attention away from the roads by taking part, for instance, in Non-Driving Related Tasks (NDRTs). That might cause them a lack of Situation Awareness (SA) when resuming to manual control. Consequently, Take-Over Requests (TORs) are system events intended to inform drivers when the vehicle is unable to handle an upcoming situation that is outside its Operational Design Domain (ODD) and the automated system might get disengaged, requiring driver's attention. The short time frame of time-critical TOR events impacts on the performance of the machine-to-human transition, especially when the driver is engaged with NDRTs. This can lead to dangerous driving conditions. In that context, this work proposes the demonstration of a device called Adaptive Tactile Device (ATD), capable of continuously adjust itself according to the driving conditions and smooth control transition by constantly informing the driver about road and system state based on force haptic feedback. The Continuous-Time (CT) nature of the proposed device is intended to provide adaptive feedback during automated vehicle conditions, promoting a feeling of control and possibly improving driver's Situation Awareness (SA) during TOR events. Future work will consider implementing this device on the steering wheel or driver's seat and collect the user's Quality of Experience (QoE) when using it in Virtual Reality (VR) simulations, to be compared with the user's objective and subjective metrics when receiving Discrete-Time (DT) feedback warnings previously applied in TOR research.