Get ready for automated driving using Virtual Reality
Daniele Sportillo, Alexis Paljic, Luciano Ojeda
To cite this version:
Daniele Sportillo, Alexis Paljic, Luciano Ojeda. Get ready for automated driving using Virtual Reality.
Accident Analysis and Prevention, Elsevier, 2018, 118, pp.102-113. 10.1016/j.aap.2018.06.003. hal01858450
HAL Id: hal-01858450
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01858450
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Get Ready for Automated Driving using Virtual Reality
Daniele Sportilloa,b,∗, Alexis Paljica , Luciano Ojedab
a MINES
ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre for robotics, 60 Bd St Michel 75006 Paris, France
b PSA Group, Technical Center of Velizy
Abstract
In conditionally automated vehicles, drivers can engage in secondary activities while traveling to their destination.
However, drivers are required to appropriately respond, in a limited amount of time, to a take-over request when the
system reaches its functional boundaries. Interacting with the car in the proper way from the first ride is crucial for car
and road safety in general. For this reason, it is necessary to train drivers in a risk-free environment by providing them
the best practice to use these complex systems. In this context, Virtual Reality (VR) systems represent a promising
training and learning tool to properly familiarize drivers with the automated vehicle and allow them to interact with
the novel equipment involved. In addition, Head-Mounted Display (HMD)-based VR (light VR) would allow for the
easy deployment of such training systems in driving schools or car dealerships. In this study, the effectiveness of a light
Virtual Reality training program for acquiring interaction skills in automated cars was investigated. The effectiveness of
this training was compared to a user manual and a fixed-base simulator with respect to both objective and self-reported
measures. Sixty subjects were randomly assigned to one of the systems in which they went through a training phase
followed by a test drive in a high-end driving simulator. Results show that the training system affects the take-over
performances. Moreover, self-reported measures indicate that the light VR training is preferred with respect to the
other systems. Finally, another important outcome of this research is the evidence that VR plays a strategic role in the
definition of the set of metrics for profiling proper driver interaction with the automated vehicle.
Keywords: conditionally automated vehicles, virtual reality, head-mounted display, take-over request, training
1. Introduction
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Imagine you are reading this article in your car as you 25
drive on the highway. Suddenly, your car asks you to
“take-over”. What would you do? At the time of writing, this scenario breaks numerous laws and is potentially
very dangerous. In the future, it would not only be legal and safe, but you would likely know how to react to 30
your car’s demands to hand over control, keeping yourself,
passengers, and other vehicles out of harm’s way.
In future automated vehicles the above situation would
be fairly common. In particular, conditionally automated
vehicles (SAE Level-3 [1]) do not require drivers to con- 35
stantly monitor their driving environment; they can, therefore, engage in secondary activities such as reading, writing emails and watching videos. However, when the automated system encounters unexpected situations, it will
assume that drivers who are sufficiently warned will ade- 40
quately respond to a take-over request.
The reestablishment of the driving context (i.e. rapid
onboarding) is one challenge of conditionally automated
vehicles [2] for the car industry. The revolution of the
driving activity, the complexity of these new systems and 45
∗ Corresponding
author
Email address: daniele.sportillo@mpsa.com,
mines-paristech.fr (Daniele Sportillo)
Preprint submitted to Accident Analysis & Prevention
the variety of situations that the driver can face requires
that drivers must have already acquired the core skills necessary to securely interact with the automated car before
their first ride. Establishing drivers’ role and avoiding confusion [3] is crucial for the safety of both the drivers themselves and other road users.
At present, a vehicle’s functionalities are demonstrated
to customers via an informal presentation by the car dealer
during the hand-over process; for further information, customers are required to read the car owner’s manual. For an
automated vehicle, these traditional procedures would not
be feasible to familiarize the new car owner with the automated system, primarily because the acquisition of skills
by the customer is not ensured. In addition, car dealers
themselves must be trained and kept up to date of each
new version of the system.
In this context, Virtual Reality (VR) constitutes a potentially valuable learning and skill assessment tool which
would allow drivers to familiarize themselves with the automated vehicle and interact with the novel equipment
involved in a free-risk environment. VR allows for the
possibility of encountering dangerous driving conditions
without putting the driver at physical risk and enable the
controllability and reproducibility of the scenario conditions [4].
VR has usually been associated with high costs and
June 5, 2018
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huge computational power. For these reasons immersive
training based on CAVEs or Head-Mounted Displays has105
until now been prohibitive in mainstream settings. However, in recent years, technological progress and the involvement of dominant technology companies has allowed
the development of affordable VR devices.
The objective of this research is to explore the poten-110
tial of the role of light Virtual Reality systems, in particular, for the acquisition of skills for the Transfer of Control
(ToC) in highly automated cars. By using the adjective
light, we want to mark the difference between VR systems
that are portable and/or easy to set up (HMDs, mobile115
VR) and systems that are cumbersome and require dedicated space to operate (CAVE systems). The idea is that
thanks to the portability and the cost-effectiveness, light
VR systems could be easily deployed in car dealerships to
train a large amount of people in an immersive environ-120
ment in a safe and reliable way.
The light VR system proposed in this paper consists of
a consumer HMD and a racing wheel. This paper aims to
compare the effectiveness of a training program based on
this system with a user manual and with a fixed-base driv-125
ing simulator. To validate the light VR system, user performances are evaluated during a test drive in a high-end
driving simulator and self-reported measures are collected
via questionnaires.
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1.1. Related work
Virtual Reality has been extensively used to train professionals and non-professionals in various domains. The
unique characteristics of learning in the 3D environment
provided by immersive VR systems such as CAVEs or135
HMDs, can enable learning tasks that are not possible or
not as effective in 2D environments provided by traditional
desktop monitors. Dalgarno et al. [5] highlighted the benefits of this kind of 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D
VLEs) by proposing a model based on their distinctive fea-140
tures such as the representational fidelity and the learner
interaction.
More in detail, HMD-based VR turns out to be more
effective when compared to other training systems, for a
wide range of applications such as surgery [6] (HMD com-145
pared to video trainer), aircraft visual inspection [7] (HMD
compared to PC-based training tool), power production [8]
(HMD compared to traditional training), mining industry
[9] (HMD compared to screen-based and projector-base
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training).
When it comes to Driving Simulation (DS), VR is used
to study several aspects of the driving task. In this context, moving-base simulators [10] are preferable to fixedbase simulators [11, 12] for their closer approach to real155
world driving [13].
By investigating the physical, behavioral and cognitive
validity of these kind of simulators with respect to the real
driving task [11], it has been also shown that DS can be
a useful tool for the initial resumption of driving, because
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it helps to avoid stress that may lead to task failure or
deterioration in performance.
Although most of the studies in DS uses static screens
as the display system, recent studies prove that HMDbased DS leads to similar physiological response and driving performance when compared to stereoscopic 3D or 2D
screens [14]. Taheri et al. [15] presented a VR DS system
composed of HMD, steering wheel and pedals to analyze
drivers’ characteristics; Goedicke et al. [16] instead proposed an implementation of an HMD in a real car to simulate automated driving as the vehicle travels on a road.
Even if the steering wheel is the most used driving interface, novel HMD systems usually come with wireless
6-DoF controllers which can be used to control a virtual
car. In a pilot study, Sportillo et al. [17] compare steering
wheel and controller-based interaction in HMD-based driving simulators. The authors conclude that even though
objective measures do not provide decisive parameters for
determining the most adequate interaction modality, selfreport indicators show a significant difference in favor of
the steering wheel.
Among other things, DS provides the opportunity to
implement, in a forgiving environment, critical scenarios
and hazardous situations which are ethically not possible to evaluate on real roads [18]. For this reason and
to overcome the limited availability of physical prototypes
for research purposes, DS is extensively used for studies on
automated vehicles to design future automotive HMI [19]
for Take-Over Requests (TORs) and to investigate the behavioral responses during the transition from automated
to manual control [20].
A research area that is gaining interest in the automated driving community concerns the impact of nondriving activities on take-over performance. To study driver’s
distraction during automated driving, researchers generally use standardized and naturalistic tasks. Standardized
tasks (such as the cognitive n-back task [21], the SuRT task
[21, 22], the Twenty Questions Task (TQT) [23]) provide
experimental control, but they do not usually correspond
to what the driver will do in the vehicle. Naturalistic tasks,
instead, provide ecological validity, but they could introduce experimental bias. Important findings were found
by Zeeb et al. [24] who studied how visual-cognitive load
impacts take-over performance by examining the engagement in three different naturalistic secondary tasks (writing an email, reading a news text, and watching a video
clip). The authors found that the drivers’ engagement in
secondary tasks only slightly affected the time required to
regain the control of the vehicle, but non-distracted drivers
performed better in the lane-keeping task.
Most of the studies in this domain implement safetycritical take-over scenarios caused by an obstacle (usually a
broken down vehicle) on the current lane [24, 17, 21, 25, 23]
and non-critical scenarios caused by the absence of lane
markings [24, 26]. To ensure security and to succeed in
the take-over process, it is important to understand how
much time before a system boundary a driver who is out
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of the loop should be warned. Gold et al. [22] indicate
that shorter TOR-time leads to a faster but worse reaction. However, assessing the quality of the take-over per-220
formance remains an open problem. Reaction times (such
as gaze reaction time, hands on wheel time, and intervention time) are analyzed [21]. Time To Collision, lateral accelerations and minimum clearance towards are objective
metrics used in obstacle avoidance scenarios [21]. Con-225
cerning subjective measures, drivers are usually asked to
reply to questionnaires: the Driver Skill Inventory (DSI)
[27] and Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ) [28] have
been largely used to evaluate the self-assessment of driving skills [29] in the last decades. In recent studies, questionnaires have been used to investigate the importance of
initial skilling and to predict the deskilling in automated230
vehicles [30]. In the same field, surveys have also been
used to evaluate usefulness and satisfaction of take-over
requests [31].
In the above studies it is not always clear how participants were taught to use the automated system. Zeeb et235
al. [24] used a traditional approach that provided the participants with a description of the system, the functional
boundaries and the alert notifications. In the vehicle, participants were also instructed to activate and deactivate
the automated driving system. This approach could not240
be adapted to the real case because it does not ensure the
correct acquisition of knowledge; thus, the drivers would
not be sufficiently skilled to safely respond to a take-over
request. In other studies participants could freely practice
in the high-end driving simulator before the actual test
drive [22]. This solution would not be feasible in terms245
of costs, space and maintenance because it would require
every car dealership to be equipped with a simulator. A
lighter VR system, such as the one proposed in this paper, could instead be more easily deployed and used for
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training purposes at a much lower cost.
Payre et. al [26] addressed the problem of drivers’
training in an automated car by comparing two types of
training: a simple training based only on practice in a driving simulator and an elaborated training which included
a text, a tutorial video and a more elaborated practice in255
the simulator. They found that participants in the elaborated training group trusted more the automated driving
and were able to take-over faster than those in the simple
training group.
Automated car research also has relevance in the field260
of aviation [32], and in particular in studies concerning
flight simulation for pilot training [33]. Although this
kind of training is targeted towards professionals, important findings from this research include the occurrence of
positive transfer and the fact that abstracted rendering265
simulators allow people to learn better than with the real
thing [34]. Pilots trained on a simulator are thus able to
co-pilot a craft immediately after their simulation training [33]. However, it is crucial that the training practices
allow for the generalization of the skills acquired in the270
virtual environment and not only for an application of the
3
rote-memorized skills specific to the training situation [35].
The considerable findings from aviation and the intense
scientific production in recent years suggest that the transition of control in automated cars is a valuable research
topic worth investigating from the design stage to the final implementation of the new systems. Moreover, the
compelling need and interest of the car industry to train a
large amount of people in a reliable and cost-effective way,
without compromising security, make light virtual reality
system tools a promising solution for this purpose.
2. Methods
This study contained two parts: training and test drive.
The aim of the training was to introduce the principles of
the Level 3 Automated Driving System (ADS)-equipped
vehicle, present the novel Human-Machine Interface (HMI),
help the drivers to localize the HMI in the vehicle, and
describe the actions to perform in order to appropriately
respond to unplanned requests to intervene. The betweensubject study with 60 participants was designed in order
to compare a light Virtual Reality system to a user manual and a fixed-base driving simulator in terms of training
effectiveness evaluated through a test drive. The test drive
required the application of knowledge and skills acquired
during the training.
2.1. The target vehicle
This study takes into account Level 3 (Conditional
Driving Automation) automated vehicles. In this level of
automation the ADS performs the Dynamic Driving Task
(DDT) with the expectation that the human driver is receptive to a Take-Over Request (TOR), also known as request to intervene, and will respond appropriately. The
DDT includes [1] lateral vehicle motion control via steering; longitudinal vehicle motion control via acceleration
and deceleration; monitoring the driving environment via
object and event detection, recognition, classification, and
response preparation; object and event response execution; maneuver planning; enhancing conspicuity via lighting, signaling and gesturing, etc.
For a more detailed taxonomy and description please
refer to the Recommended Practice by SAE [1]. A TOR
is a notification by the ADS to a human driver that s/he
should promptly begin or resume performance of the DDT.
Unplanned TORs are prompted by the ADS when it reaches
system boundaries because of unpredictable and potentially hazardous situations that it cannot handle. These
situations could be represented by an obstacle on the road,
missing road markings or system failure. The target vehicle provided two driving modes on highways: Manual
Driving and Conditionally Automated Driving. The vehicle was not expected to execute automatic lane changes.
In the implementation the vehicle had 5 possible states:
(a) Manual driving: the human driver is in charge of all
the aspects of the dynamic driving task (execution
of steering and acceleration/deceleration)
(b) ADS available: the human driver can transfer control
to the ADS, by operating the HMI.
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(c) ADS enabled: the ADS performs all the aspects of
the dynamic driving task, namely the control of the
longitudinal and the lateral guidance.
(d) Take-over request: the ADS reaches a system boundary and thus is no longer able to perform the dynamic driving task. The human driver is notified
with a visual-auditory alert indicating the time budget s/he has to take-over.
Figure 1: The HUD of the target vehicle and the symbols that represent the states of the vehicle: (a) manual driving, (b) autonomous
driving system available (c) autonomous driving system activated,
(d) take over request with countdown, (e) emergency brake. The
arrows represent the possible transition between the states.
(e) Emergency brake: the human driver does not take
over in the allotted amount of time and the vehicle325
performs an emergency brake on the lane. The alert
continues until the control is transferred back to the
human driver.
during the automated driving and the best practice to respond to a take-over request. For all the participants,
the training program started with an introduction video
that briefly presented the main functionalities of a Level 3
ADS-equipped car. The video was displayed onto a different support according to the display system used during
the training.
In the study three different training systems were compared (Figure 2)
When the ADS was activated, the car kept a constant
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longitudinal speed of 90 km/h, accelerating or decelerating
if the speed at the activation was respectively lower or
higher.
2.1.1. Human-Machine Interface
The Human-Machine Interface in the target vehicle
consisted of a head-up display (HUD) and a button on335
the steering wheel. The HUD (see Figure 1) showed information about current speed, speed limit, distance traveled
and current state of the vehicle. In Figure 1, the different
symbols representing the states of the system are illustrated; the arrows indicate the possible transition between
states. The symbols are taken from previous studies [36].340
The background color of the HUD also changed according
to the current state of the vehicle.
Take-over requests were notified to the human driver
with a visual-auditory alert. The visual alert consisted of
the symbol in Figure 1d with a countdown indicating the345
budget of time available to take over. The auditory alert
was a 0.7 second beep looped every second.
In the implementation of the automated driving system, the human driver could activate the ADS (if available) by pushing a button on the steering wheel. When the
ADS was enabled, at any time the human driver could de-350
activate it and immediately take back control. This could
be done in three ways: (i) pushing the same button on the
steering wheel, (ii) using the brake pedal, or (iii) using the
accelerator pedal and the steering wheel.
Since all the participants were French speakers, all the355
text in the HMI was displayed in French to avoid language
comprehension problems.
2.2. The training
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The aim of the training was to teach drivers how to in-360
teract with automated cars in three situations: the manual
mode, automated mode and the take-over request. To do
so, the training introduced the participants to the HMI
for each situation, the actions they were free to perform
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• a User Manual (UM) displayed on a laptop;
• a Fixed-Base driving simulator (FB) with real cockpit and controls (pedals and steering wheel);
• a Light Virtual Reality (LVR) system consisting of
a Head-mounted display (HMD) and a game racing
wheel.
These systems differed in terms of level of immersion and
interaction they provided. “Immersion” refers to the technological capabilities a system is able to deliver from an
objective point of view [37]. “Interaction” refers to the
modality through which the user can perform actions in
the virtual environment. Immersion and interaction do
not apply to the User Manual group. The fixed-base driving simulator and the LVR system shared the same interaction modalities, but the level of immersion was different.
In what follows, the three systems are described.
2.2.1. User manual training
The user manual (UM) consisted of a slide presentation
displayed on a 13.3” screen of a laptop computer (Figure 2a). First, the introduction video was played. Then,
the participants were asked to carefully read each of the
8 slides and to go to the next one when they felt ready.
They did not have any time limit. The slides used text and
images to present the actions to be performed during the
manual driving, the automated driving and the take-over
requests. For each situation the correspondent icons were
also presented. An animated slide was included to show
how to activate the automated driving.
This system represented the non-immersive and noninteracting training environment. The participants could
only browse forward and backward the slides, with no time
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b
c
Figure 2: The three training systems: (a) the user manual displayed on the laptop computer, (b) the fixed-base driving simulator, (c) the
light VR system
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limit; however, they were not involved in a driving situa-400
tion and they could not practice the action required with
the real equipment.
2.2.2. Fixed-base simulator
The fixed-base simulator (FB) consisted of an actual405
car cockpit including a driving seat, a dashboard, a forcefeedback steering wheel and a set of pedals (Figure 2b).
All of these components were real components of a Citroen C3; this allowed participants to have a more natural
interaction with the driving controls. A 9.7” tablet used410
by the driver to perform the secondary activity was placed
in the center console. To display the virtual environment
a 65” plasma screen was positioned behind the cockpit at
1.5m from the driver.
This simulator represented the low-immersion training415
environment. The limited size of the screen did not allow
the implementation a 1:1 scale between the virtual and
the real world. Also, another implication of the reduced
field of view was the lack of isolation for the participant
who was surrounded by the experimental room during the420
training.
2.2.3. Light Virtual Reality system
The light VR system (LVR) included an HMD as a display system, and a Logitech G25 Racing Wheel as driving425
system (Figure 2c). The HMD was an HTC Vive which
provides stereoscopic vision at 90 FPS, 2160 x 1200 (1080
x 1200 per eye) resolution, a field of view of 110 degrees
and low-latency positional tracking. Spatial sound was
presented via headphones. Thanks to these features, the430
LVR system represented the high-immersion training system. The trainee was totally surrounded by the virtual
environment, but once wearing the headset s/he lost the
possibility to see any part of his/her own body. Although
the field of view of the HTC Vive is not comparable with
the human vision, the design choices for the training sce-435
nario (no traffic, straight lane) helped to reduce the stimuli
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in the peripheral vision, which is one of the causes of simulator sickness [38].
At the beginning, the participants were immersed in
a virtual room with white walls. This room represented
a transitional environment from the real world to the virtual learning activity. A transparent effect was applied
(Figure 3a) to the car to ease the transition to the virtual world. The introduction video was displayed on the
front wall. We hypothesized that, at the beginning of the
experiment, a simpler environment with a few visual elements could help participants better accept the system
[39]. The purpose of this environment was twofold. First,
novices of Virtual Reality and participants who were using an HMD for the first time could become familiar with
the new system by experiencing the effects of their actions
(head rotation, head movement) on the system. Second,
since the participants could not see their hands, they could
become aware of the car controls, identifying the position
of the steering wheel, the button on the steering wheel,
and the pedals.
The participants were located inside a virtual model of
a Citröen DS3 car [40]. To have a spatial correspondence
between the real steering wheel and the virtual one, the
steering wheel inside the virtual car was a 3D model of
the real racing wheel with which the participants were interacting. Moreover, the position and the movements of
the virtual model corresponded to the real one, allowing
for co-located manipulation. After this phase of acclimatization, the virtual environment evolved into the training
environment. The car was displayed with as much realism
as possible. Thus, the participant performed the training
described in Table 1.
2.2.4. The Virtual Learning Environment
For the training using the LVR system and the fixedbase driving simulator, a step-by-step tutorial was developed in the form of a Virtual Learning Environment
(VLE). The VLE provided the same information and stim-
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Table 1: The tasks in the Virtual Learning Environment. Each action was notified to the driver with visual and auditory messages.
uli to the two groups of participants, except for the differences due to the nature and the limits of the two systems
involved.
The characteristics of the target vehicle described in
Section 2.1 were implemented in the VLE. The task of
the participants consisted of interactions with the car following the instruction of a virtual vocal assistant. The
messages announced by the assistant were also displayed
on a yellow panel in front of the trainee (Figure 3c). The
panel appeared when the user intervention was required,
and disappeared as soon as the trainee performed the required actions. No other actions were possible other than
the required one.
The driving scenario was a straight 2-lane road delimited by guardrails. No traffic was implemented. Only trees
were placed on the roadside. A simple environment was
specifically chosen to focus participants on the training
task without any distractions, and to reduce the peripheral optical flow which can contribute to simulation sickness [41]. The training steps are described in Table 1.
Before the driving scenario, an acclimatization virtual environment was proposed to the participants to help them
locate and identify the controls of the car.
Secondary activity. This training also included a secondary
activity that required the use of a tablet (a real one in the
case of the fixed-base simulator, a virtual one in the case
of LVR system). The tablet was used to distract the human driver from the driving task during the automated
driving. The distraction task was the same for all the
participants and consisted of a video of a TEDx Talk in
French. The participants were asked, but not forced, to
look at the tablet. The video was automatically played
when the automated system was enabled and paused during the manual driving and the take-over requests.
2.3. The test drive
After the training, the participant performed a test
drive designed to evaluate their performance in a more
realistic driving scenario. The system used for this purpose was a high-end driving simulator consisting of the
front part of a real car surrounded by a panoramic display
(Figure 4). The display was placed 2.5m from the driver
and covered a field of view of 170 degrees. Three threechip DLP projectors displayed the scene. The rear part
of the car was substituted with a monitor that displayed
the virtual environment from the rear window. The lateral495
mirrors consisted of two LCD displays as well. The cockpit
was also equipped with a microphone to communicate with
the experimenter and 4 cameras to record the scene inside
the car. Data including position, speed and acceleration
of the car, and current driving mode were recorded.
Inside the car, a 10.8 inch tablet was placed in the500
center console. It provided 9 different secondary activities:
3 games (a solitary, 2048, Simon) and 6 videos (3 talks, 2
movies and 1 movie trailer). The tablet was only available
6
0 km
Manual driving
The trainee drove the car in the manual mode to
familiarize with the simulator
1 km
Delegation of driving
The trainee was required to activate the automated
driving system by pushing the button on the steering
wheel
2 km
Control take-over
The trainee was required to switch back to manual
mode by pushing the button on the steering wheel
2.75 km Delegation of driving
4.25 km Control take-over
The trainee was required to switch back to manual
mode by using the accelerator pedal and the steering
wheel
5 km
Delegation of driving
5.75 km Accelerator override
The trainee was required to use the accelerator pedal
in order to increase the speed of the vehicle without
deactivate the automated driving system.
6.5 km Steering override
The trainee was asked to use the steering wheel to
perform a lane change task without deactivate the
automated driving system.
7.5 km Take-over Request
A 30-second TOR was issued. The trainee was assisted during the take-over phase
8.25 km Delegation of driving
9.25 km Take-over Request
A 10-second TOR was issued and the trainee had to
take-back without any assistance. An obstacle was
placed 300 meter after. An emergency brake was
performed if the trainee did not take-back in time.
10 km
Free driving
The trainee was free to practice the delegation of
driving and to take-back.
11 km
End of the training
during autonomous driving and it displayed the message
“Take back control” during the requests to intervene.
Before starting the test, participants were instructed
about the use of the equipment inside the car and were
shown the button to activate/deactivate the automated
driving system.
The choice of a fixed rather than a moving-base simulator was justified by the driving scenario which did not
provide important lateral or longitudinal acceleration.
2.3.1. Driving scenario
The driving scenario of the test drive represented a dual
carriageway with two lanes in each direction. Dense traffic
was added to both directions. The aim of the test drive
was to investigate the skills acquired by the participants
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b
c
Figure 3: The Virtual Learning Environment. In (a) the familiarization environment. The car is displayed with a transparent effect and
the panel on the front wall shows the indicators for the accelerator and brake pedal and for the steering wheel. In (b) a post-production
illustration of a participant immersed in the virtual environment. In (c) a view of the interior of the car with the training message (on the
yellow panel) and the virtual tablet used for the secondary activity
a
b
Figure 4: The test drive simulator: (a) the real cabin with the 170 degree panoramic display and (b) a view of the cabin interior
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Figure 5: The test drive scenario with the three situations that provoked the TORs: (A) stationary car on the lane, (B) loss of ground
marking, (C) sensor failure
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during the training and their reaction when a non-planned
take-over request was issued. For this purpose, 3 requests
to intervene Figure 5 were issued during the test drive:
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(A) a 10-second TOR caused by a road narrowing provoked by a stationary car on the right lane; this situation (Obstacle) required the driver to brake and to
change lane in order to avoid the obstacle.
the simulator, the three TORs were issued after an autonomous driving phase, at 11.5 km, 19km and 23km.
During the autonomous driving, participants were asked
to engage in one of the secondary activities proposed by
the tablet.
2.4. Measures
Defining the quality of take-over is not an easy exercise,
because assessing the ability to drive or to operate an automated vehicle requires the evaluation of various aspects
related or not to the actual driving task. In literature there
exists a set of well-known parameters which can be used
to evaluate performance in driving scenarios like the once
used in the test-drive. To evaluate the training systems
and the learning environment, objective and self-reported
measures were collected and treated anonymously.
2.4.1. Self-reported measures
(B) a 10-second TOR caused by a loss of road marking540
In total 6 different questionnaires were proposed to
(Road Marking); this situation required the driver to
the participants. A demographic questionnaire (containhold the vehicle inside the lane.
ing also questions about driving habits, familiarity with
Virtual Reality and previous experiences with driving sim(C) a 5-second TOR caused by a sensor failure (Failulators) was administered at the begininning of the study
ure); this situation did not require any specific ac545
along with a survey about opinion concerning automated
tions from the driver.
cars. This last survey was also administered at the end
of the study. To evaluate the appreciation of the training,
To control order effects, the arrival order of TOR A and
participants were asked to answer to 10 questions survey
TOR B was randomized. TOR C was always issued as the
and to evaluate graphical and physical realism of the Virlast one in order.
The test drive lasted for about 20 minutes time dur-550 tual Environment (only for FB and LVR groups). After
the training, the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire [42] was
ing which the participants drove for 24 km. After a first
phase of manual driving (4km) to familiarize drivers with
7
555
560
administered to the LVR group. After the test-drive, all600 Training (15 minutes). The training contained two parts:
the groups answered to a final questionnaire.
the introductory video (2 minutes) and the actual training
(slides for the user manual group, and the Virtual Learning
2.4.2. Objective measures
Environment for the fixed-base and light VR system). The
training for the user manual group generally lasted for less
To evaluate the take over quality and the state of the
driver during the autonomous phase, objective measures605 time with respect to the LVE one.
were used as performance factors in the test drive with the
Second questionnaire (5 minutes). The participants filled
high-end simulator. According to the take over situation,
out questionnaire C. Participants of the VLE group filled
both raw data from the simulator (such as position and
out questionnaire D. Participant of the LVR group filled
speed of the car, current driving mode, etc.) and video
out also the questionnaire E.
feeds were used to assess the following variables:
• Reaction time (measured in seconds), the elapsed610 Test Drive (20 minutes). The participants drove in the
high-end simulator.
time from TOR until the driver takes back control.
565
570
• Maximum deviation from the lane center (measured
in meters), within an interval of 30s after the takeover request.
Third questionnaire (5 minutes). The participants completed questionnaires F and B.
• Time To Collision (measured in seconds), “the time
required for two vehicles to collide if they continue
at their present speed and on the same path”. This615
measure was used to evaluate the evasive maneuver
to avoid the stationary car [21].
3. Results
• Stress and confidence in the vehicle, during the automated driving phases.
620
2.5. Participants
575
580
585
Sixty subjects participated in the experiment. The participants included 30 females (50%) and 30 males (50%)
aged between 22 and 71 (M = 43, SD = 14). Three
groups of age were identified: the first group contained625
participants aged between 22 and 34 years old (7 males,
11 females); the second group participants aged between
35 and 54 (14 males, 9 females); the third group participants older than 55 (9 males, 10 females). They were randomly assigned to one of the system in which they would630
be trained. The three groups contained 20 subjects each.
All the subjects were volunteers recruited by a company
specialized in hiring consumer tests participants and had
a valid driving license. At the end of the experiment, each
participant was rewarded with a 40 euros voucher.
635
590
595
2.6. Procedures
The duration of the full experiment was about 60 minutes for each participant. Participants were divided into
three groups of 20. Each group underwent training with
one of the systems described above. The study consisted640
of the following phases:
Introduction (10 minutes). The participants were welcomed
and informed in detail about the purpose of the study.
They signed the consent form.
645
First questionnaire (5 minutes). The participants completed questionnaires A and B.
8
All the participants completed the experiment. Selfreport and performance variables were tested for group
differences using ANOVAs (and Tukey’s HSD test for pairwise comparison) for continuous normally distributed data
and Kruskal-Wallis (and Fisher’s LSD for pairwise comparison) test for ordinal, categorical and non-normally distributed data. Paired t-test was used for PrePost questionnaires. The significance level of 5% was chosen for all
the tests.
3.1. Self-report measures
Self-reported measures were collected through a set of
questions at the beginning of the test, after the training
and after the test drive. The measures of user appreciation
and simulator sickness were tested for group differences
using Kruskal-Wallis test. In case of significant differences
among the three groups (p < 0.05), the Fisher’s LSD test
was used to identify which pairs of means were significantly
different, and which were not. The measure of confidence
on automated vehicles was tested using a paired t-test.
3.1.1. Appreciation of the training
To evaluate the appreciation of the training the participants filled out a 10-question survey containing questions
about perceived usefulness, easiness, pleasantness, realism
and so on. The Likert results are reported in Figure 6. The
LVR scored better in all the questions, and in 4 of them
the difference was significant. Moreover, to have a general
score, all the questions were summed up. Up to a total
of 50 points (the highest the better), results showed that
the LVR scored significantly better (M = 43) than both
the fixed-base simulator (M = 40, p < 0.05) and the user
manual (M = 39.5, p < 0.05). The results of the survey
about realism and comfort are reported in Figure 7.
Table 2: Demographic features distributed across the different systems
System
UM
FB
LVR
Total
Gender
(F/M)
11/9
10/10
9/11
30/30
Age
y (SD)
45 (12.9)
46.9 (15.5)
43.5 (13.9)
45.1 (14)
Age Group
5/9/6
7/6/7
6/8/6
18/23/19
Car with Cruise Control?
Yes (no use) / No
11(2) / 8
16(4) / 4
11(1) / 9
38(7) / 21
First time in a driving simulator
(Y/N)
16/3
16/4
14/6
46/13
Figure 6: Likert responses to the questionnaire of training appreciation.
Figure 7: Likert responses to the realism survey for FB and LVR
groups
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3.1.2. Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ)
The SSQ was filled out only by the participants who
performed the training with the LVR. The Total Score
(TS) and the subscales relative to Nausea, Oculomotor
and Discomfort symptoms were calculated according to665
the formulas described by Kennedy et. al [42]. Results are
reported in Table 3 and Figure 8. According to the categorization of SSQ proposed by Kennedy et. al. [43], 50% of
the subjects reported no symptoms (TS = 0) or minimal
symptoms (TS < 10). The highest scores were reported
by a participant affected by monocular vision impairment670
(TS = 71) and a participant affected by kinetosis also in
traditional vehicles (TS = 97.24). However, they as well
as all the other participants were able to complete the
training (no dropouts occurred). There were no significant differences with respect to participants’ age or gen-675
der. Analyzing the subscales, the Disorientation subscale
9
Figure 8: Results of SSQ scores (Nausea, Oculomotor, Disorientation
subscales and Total) for the LVR group. In orange, the percentile
graph. The vertical blue lines represent the value of SSQ if all the
symptoms were reported as “slight” on that subscale.
(with symptoms related to vestibular disturbances such as
dizziness and vertigo) registered the highest scores. This
result was expected and is mainly due to the nature of the
HMD, which causes conflicts between the vestibular and
the visual signal.
3.1.3. Pre-post Questionnaire on automated vehicles
At the beginning of the test, participants were asked to
give a score from 1 to 5 to a set of 8 sentences to express
their opinions on automated vehicles. After the test drive,
they reply to the same questionnaire for the second time.
The questionnaire contained sentences about confidence in
the actions performed by the automated system, perceived
security, usefulness in the society and so on. The Wilcoxon
Rank Sum Test was performed to compare the answers to
Table 3: Results of the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire.
[N]ausea
[O]culomotor
[D]isorientation
Total Score [TS]
Mean
16.7
18.95
20.18
21.32
Median
14.31
7.58
6.96
13.09
SD
21.19
21.52
32.09
26.7
Min
0
0
0
0
Max
85.7
75.8
125.28
97.24
710
715
to the ones trained with the user manual. Moreover, the
reaction time of the second TOR of the User Manual group
was significantly higher than the reaction time of the first
TOR of the two other groups. No difference was observed
for the third TOR between the three groups. The order
of arrival of the three TORs did not impact the reaction
time (p = 0.51).
Figure 9: Mean of the answer to the pre-post questionnaires. A
light-green bar indicates an increase in the post questionnaire for
the given question. The values indicate the percentage of change in
the questions.
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685
690
695
700
705
(a) Mean and 95% Confidence Interval of reaction times for
each Take-Over Request.
the pre and the post questionnaires.
Results are reported in Figure 9 and they show a general increase of the post-questionnaire score. It is very
interesting to point out that the sentence n. 5 is the only
one for which the post-score was lower than the pre-score
in all the system (“I think that the semi-autonomous car
can reduce the risk of accident.” ). Nevertheless, the difference for this question was not statistically significant.
Important increases in the post-questionnaire score can be
observer in particular for the sentences 7 (“I see myself doing other tasks than driving in a semi-autonomous car”)
and 8 (“I have confidence in the decisions that the semiautonomous car would take at my place”). The positive
difference for n. 7 was significant (p < 0.01) only for the
LVR group; for n. 8 was significant (p < 0.05) for all the
three groups.
TOR
1
2
3
1, 2
UM
7.36 (3.55)a
5.97 (3.06)a
3.20 (0.67)
6.66 (3.34)a
FB
3.80 (1.61)b
3.01 (0.92)b
2.87 (0.71)
3.41 (1.37)b
LVR
3.34 (0.95)b
3.275 (0.89)b
2.84 (0.83)
3.32 (0.91)b
(superscripts indicate significance groups)
(b) Mean and Standard Deviation
Figure 10: Take-over reaction times for each systems and for each
TOR. The first two were 10-second TORs; the last one was a 5-second
TOR.
3.2. Performance measures
The performance measures evaluated the quality of the
take-over in terms of reaction time, maximum deviation
720
from the lane center, and the trajectory during an evasive maneuver. These variables were tested for group difference using ANOVA (for normally distributed data) or
Kruskal-Wallis (for non-normal distributed data); in case
of significant differences (p < 0.05) each pair was tested
725
with the Tukey’s HSD test (after ANOVA) or Fisher’s LSD
test (after Kruskal-Wallis test).
3.2.1. Reaction time
Three TORs were issued during the test drive after an
730
automated driving phase. In Figure 10 the mean of the
reaction time per TOR for each system is reported. For
the first and the second TOR, the participants trained with
the LVR and the FB simulator reacted faster with respect
10
3.2.2. Deviation from lane center
Considering the TOR caused by loss of road marking,
the stability of the trajectory was evaluated. Performing
lane change in situation in which is not required is usually
considered a low-quality take over [44]. In the driving scenario, given that the width of the lane was lane w = 3m
and the width of the car was car w = 2m, the maximum possible distance from the lane center beyond which
the car does not cross the separation line is d = 0.75m.
For each participant, the maximum deviation from the
lane center in the 10 seconds after the TOR was calculated. The value was kept with the sign (from −1.75m
to +1.75m). The difference between this value and the
maximum deviation was evaluated. Results are reported
in Figure 11. It can be observed that even though the
medians are not significantly different, the LVR group has
a lower standard deviation (σ LVR = 0.48) than the UM
(σ UM = 1.05) and the FB (σ FB = 1.03) group.
Figure 13: Means and 95% Confidence Interval of the stress and confidence score attributed to the participants during the 3 autonomous
driving phases.
Figure 11: Box plot of deviation from lane center for each system.
The two lanes are plotted. The value 0 in the y-axis represents the
center of the right lane in the driving scenario.
Table 5: Number of gaze switch between the secondary activity and
the road environment for each autonomous driving phase; Eyes-onRoad is the ratio between the total amount of time spent looking at
the road and the duration of the autonomous driving phase
N. of gaze
Eyes-on-Road
Figure 12: Time To Collision [21]: the red block represents the stationary obstacle; the red line is the trajectory of the vehicle; in green,
the position of the car when the TTC h is calculated; in blue, the
position of the car when the TTC l is calculated.
735
740
745
750
755
3.2.3. Time To Collision
One of the TOR was issued because of a stationary760
car on the right lane. The task of the trainee was to take
over and avoid the car. The quality of the maneuver was
evaluated with the Time To Collision (TTC) Figure 12 in
the same way described by Happee et al. [21]. The TTC
765
was computed using the following formula T T C = dx
v ,
where dx was the distance of the car from the obstacle
and v was the speed of the car at that moment. Two TTC
were evaluated: TTC h was computed when the heading
of the car no longer intersected the obstacle; TTC l was
computed when the full vehicle front was in the new lane.770
The results are shown in table Table 4 and no significant
differences were observed among the three groups.
3.3. Stress and confidence during autonomous driving
775
To evaluate drivers stress and confidence in the vehicle
during automated driving, the video feed recorded during
the test drive was analyzed and annotated with a videolabeling tool developed by the authors.
During the automated driving phase drivers were free
780
to engage in non-driving related activities by using the
Table 4: Means (and standard deviation) of Time To Collision (TTC)
and Distance To Collision (DTC) used to evaluate the evasive maneuver
DTC h [m]
DTC l [m]
TTC h [s]
TTC l [s]
UM
54.21 (35.61)
18.64 (19.12)
4.01 (2.89)
1.27 (1.13)
FB
58.45 (49.63)
33.35 (78.17)
3.87 (2.59)
1.09 (1.69)
LVR
67.5 (62.72)
23.8 (41.61)
3.43 (2.10)
1.25 (1.86)
p = .70
p = .67
p = .77
p = .93
785
UM
17.9 | 16 | 5
0.25 | 0.32 | 0.16
FB
26.6 | 22.9 | 5.6
0.21 | 0.33 | 0.15
LVR
18 | 18.9 | 6.5
0.22 | 0.25 | 0.16
tablet in the car. Before the beginning of the test-drive,
participants were instructed in using the tablet to switch
between active (games) or passive activities (videos, movies).
A score was attributed to each participant during the
three autonomous phases. The score ranged from 1 to 5
(the higher the better), where 1 corresponded to “Complete monitoring of the driving environment” and 5 corresponded to “Complete focus on the non-driving activity”.
The score of 3 was assigned to drivers who occasionally
monitored the driving environment.
To attribute this score several aspects were taken into
consideration, such as the rate of gaze switch between the
driving environment and the tablet and the length of the
gazes, the insistence to talk to the experimenter, the position of the driver on the seat, the position of the hands.
In Table 5 are reported the number of gaze switch and
the ratio between the total amount of time spent looking
at the road and the duration of each automated driving
phase.
Results are reported in Figure 13 and they show that
the group trained with the User Manual scored less in
the first autonomous phase with respect to the others.
Considering that those participants were experiencing autonomous driving for the first time, this behaviour is expected. It can be observed that the score for the UM group
increases in the second autonomous phase, while for the
FB and HMD groups the behaviour is almost the same.
In the third and last phase the score for all the groups
increases.
4. Discussion
A first outcome of the study is that the training allowed all the participants to respond to the Take-Over
Requests. In summary, according to the objective metrics
11
790
795
800
805
810
815
820
825
830
835
840
measured during the test drive, it is possible to identify845
two groups of participants that significantly differed for
the reaction time. The group of participants trained with
the Virtual Learning Environment (FB and LVR) were
able to respond to the take-over request faster than the
group of participants trained with the user manual. After850
the take-over, the training system did not significantly influence the driving performance in the lane keeping task
and in the evasive maneuver. Furthermore, self-reported
measures showed responses in favor of the LVR training
system. There are no variables (self-reported nor objec-855
tive) for which the LVR system scored significantly worse
than the other training systems.
4.1. Self-report measures
Self-report measures showed statistically significant re-860
sults. In particular, significant differences were observed
in the answers to the training appreciation questionnaire
in which participants evaluated, among other characteristics, its usefulness, ease of understanding and pleasantness. In this questionnaire the LVR system scored sig-865
nificantly better than the fixed-base simulator and user
manual training. Analyzing each questions of the survey,
we found that the participants considered the FB training
more confusing than the LVR even though the training
program was exactly the same. Another interesting outcome is that the LVR-based training was considered easier870
to understand than the other systems. Although it is possible that these results can be attributed to a VR “wow factor”, participants’ previous experiences with driving simulators (p = 0.41) and their knowledge of the concept of
Virtual Reality (p = 0.25) did not significantly impact the875
answers. A hypothesis to explain these results is that the
technical characteristics exclusive to the LVR system, such
as the large field of view, the head tracking, the 1:1 scale
between the real and the virtual world, affected the perception of the learning. A second hypothesis is that since880
the participants of the LVR group were isolated from the
real world, both visually and acoustically, they could better focus on the training.
There were no significant differences (p = .66) in the
answers of the questionnaire concerning the graphic real-885
ism and the physical realism of the simulator. This result
suggests that even if with the LVR the participants interacted with a racing wheel instead of the real steering
wheel and they were not able to see their hands, these factors did not play a significant role. Also, the transitional890
environment (Figure 3a) from the real to the virtual world
familiarized the participant with the lack of visual representation of the hands. Some of the participants were
surprised to not see their hands, but then they realized in
this environment that they could rely on proprioception895
to interact in a natural way with the commands.
Analyzing the single questions of the pre-post questionnaire about automated cars, it is important to point out
that for all the questions but one, the post-questionnaire
score was higher than the pre-questionnaire among all the
12
three groups. The questionnaire aimed at evaluating the
confidence on automated cars in terms of usefulness, perceived security, willingness to perform secondary tasks and
so on. While at the end of the study participants trusted
more the actions of the automated system than the beginning, they did not confirm their expectations that the conditionally automated car could reduce the risk of accidents.
The hypothesis is that people tended to idealize the autonomous car as a perfect entity, but then their perception
was influenced by the driving scenario. In fact, during the
test drive the automated driving system prompted three
non-planned take-over requests in a short time. This could
let the participants think that this kind of TORs were more
frequent than they actually are. Furthermore one of the
TOR was caused by a critical situation (stationary car).
This result suggests that the driving scenario should also
present planned take-over requests with longer time buffers
and no critical situation. The participants were also asked
to self-evaluate on a 1-5 likert scale their readiness to drive
an automated vehicle after the training and after the test
drive. The answer after the test drive was higher among
all the systems, but the difference (+10%) was significant
only for the user manual group.
4.2. Simulator Sickness
The aim of the evaluation of the SSQ was not to compare the LVR and the FB groups since previous studies
in literature already proved that HMDs usually produce
more simulator sickness than fixed base simulators [45, 14].
Instead, the experimental protocol included the SSQ [42]
with the objective of investigating if the use of an HMD
would prevent participants from being trained in an effective way and analyzing the causes of sickness in case of
dropouts. A first promising outcome is that no dropouts
occurred; this result is very important in particular because 70% of participants in the LVR group used a Virtual
Reality headset for the first time. Furthermore, the HMD
produced no or minimal symptoms of simulator sickness
in 50% of the cases. These results agree with Kennedy et.
al [42] who showed that in their survey “the 0-value (the
zero point) contained at least 40%, and as much as 75%, of
the observations”. Although this study was not focused on
the reduction of simulator sickness, we adopted some wellknown strategies [38] on both the Virtual Environment
(such as straight road, simple environment and low peripheral optical flow) and the physical system (positional coherence of the virtual and the real steering wheel) to limit
the manifestation of oculo-vestibular conflicts. Thanks to
these choices, the SSQ results (mean score T S = 21.32
and the absence of dropouts), are comparable, or even
lower, than the score found in recent studies about simulation sickness related to virtual reality driving simulation
[46, 14]. However, further studies focused on this issue are
needed to validate this result and to improve the training
experience.
4.3. Objective and performance measures
900
905
910
915
920
925
930
935
940
945
950
955
In the test drive, data in the simulator were recorded
to assess the take-over quality and the driver’s behaviors
during the automated driving. The take-over quality was
evaluated according to the reaction time, the maximum
lateral position on the lane, and the time to collision during960
the evasive maneuver to avoid the stationary car on the
lane.
Concerning the reaction time in the two 10-second TORs,
the participants in the UM group reacted slower than the
other two groups. No differences were instead observed965
comparing the FB and the LVR groups. For the 5-second
TOR the difference was not significant among any of the
groups. This result suggests that participants who actually performed a take-over during the training were able
to respond better to the first request to intervene in a970
realistic situation. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the
decrease of reaction time for the 5-second TOR is due to
(i) a learning effect and (ii) the results of Gold et al. [22]
who showed that the reaction time depends on the time
budget given for the take-over request. With respect to the975
TOR caused by the stationary car on the right lane, not all
participants were able to perform a safe evasive maneuver
to avoid the obstacle. However, no significant differences
were observed between the three groups as far as the time
to collision is concerned. Furthermore, according to the980
age group, no significant differences were observed regarding the reaction time nor the maximum lateral position;
this result is in agreement with Korber et al. [23] who
found that older drivers handle critical traffic events and
adapt to the experience of take-over situations as well as
younger drivers. Finally, considering the TOR caused by
loss of road marking, the stability of the trajectory in the985
30 seconds after the TOR was evaluated and no significant
differences between the groups were observed comparing
the maximum lateral distance from the center of the lane.
The absence of significant differences in these measures
suggests that, although these metrics could be useful to as-990
sess driving performance and driver behavior after a takeover request, they are not suitable to compare training
effectiveness. In fact, evaluating driving and interaction
skills in automated cars is a hard task because it is still
not clear what it means to be able to drive or operate995
this kind of vehicles. According to Walker et al. [47] lack
of practice arising from sustained automatic control could
erode driving skills. The same concern about driving skills
emerges from the paper of Stanton et al. [32] who asked
“if drivers are not performing a function, how can they be1000
expected to take it over adequately when the automated
systems fail to cope?”.
Therefore, in the near future, traditional metrics could
no longer be relevant to assess driving performance in automated vehicles. The results of this work suggest that1005
Virtual Reality represents a promising tool to evaluate as
well all those metrics that are not strictly related to the
driving activity.
13
4.4. About learning-by-driving
An important observation which challenged the study
was the feeling that the participants trained with the VLE
(FB and LVR groups) did not experience the training as an
actual training program, but more like a session of automated driving simulator. Let us recall that the aim of the
VLE was (i) to inform drivers about the characteristics of
the automated driving system, (ii) help them in identifying
and localize the HMI in the car and (iii) teach the appropriate response (activation and deactivation of the automated driving system) to a given stimulus. For the last two
objectives, a virtual vocal assistant provided instructions
to the participants; while instructions relative to the takeover were provided to the subjects during the secondary
activity, those relative to the activation of the automated
driving systems were given to them while they were performing the driving task; in other words, participants were
asked to aim attention at the training instructions while
they were already focusing on a high-demand cognitive activity. However, the driving scenario during the training
was kept as simple as possible (no traffic, straight lane) in
order to limit driver interventions. Although this hypothesis, all the trainees were able to assimilate the procedural
skills. One of the research questions we will investigate in
the future study will be if learning-by-driving actually improves the skill acquisition process, or if the driving task
requires a cognitive load which deteriorates the training
performance.
5. Conclusion
The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a light Virtual Reality system based on HMD for
the training of conditionally automated vehicle drivers. To
evaluate the usefulness of the system and to assess the effectiveness of the training, the LVR was compared to a
fixed-base simulator and a user manual; a test drive in a
high-end simulator was performed by the participants after the training. To the best of our knowledge, this study
represents the first attempt of use of HMD-based Virtual
Reality for training purposes in automated vehicles.
The results of this research persuade us that light Virtual Reality systems represent a valuable tool for the acquisition of operational skills in conditionally automated
vehicles. The proposed training system, composed of an
HMD and a game racing wheel, is a portable and costeffective device that provides an adequate level of immersion for teaching drivers how to respond to a take-over request in a safe environment. Therefore, this system could
be employed for the training of future customers of automated cars before their first ride. The step-by-step tutorial implemented in the Virtual Learning Environment
impacted on the performance and provided faster reaction
time in the test drive. Moreover, among all the training systems, participants preferred the light VR system in
terms of usefulness, ease of use and realism.
1010
1015
1020
A direct outcome of these results is the acknowledgment of VR as key player in the definition of the set of1070
metrics for profiling drivers’ behavior in automated vehicles in order to ensure a safer interaction between humans
and automated systems.
Starting from these results, in future work we will im-1075
plement the training program in the form of a serious game
in which the level of instruction adapts to the drivers’
needs in order to assess the acquisition of skill during the
training itself. Furthermore, the need of the simulated1080
driving task during the training will be investigated. Finally, longer test-drives with real vehicles are considered
of primary importance to validate current results.
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
1085
[17]
Acknowledgement
1025
This research was supported by the French Foundation1090
of Technological Research under grant CIFRE 2015/1392
for the doctoral work of D. Sportillo at PSA Group.
[18]
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