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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Name: Brittany Noah
Date: Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Time: 12:00pm
Location: JS Coon 148
Advisors:
Professor Bruce N. Walker, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Thesis Committee Members:
Associate Professor Jamie C. Gorman, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Professor Ayanna M. Howard, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Title: Understanding Automation Handoff Impacts on Workload and Trust when Mitigated by Reliability Displays
Abstract:
Current commercial vehicles are beginning to include automated features such as adaptive cruise control and automated lane keeping, and cars in the next five years are predicted to have fully autonomous features. As these automated features are integrated into vehicles, the driver must know how to properly interact with and trust these systems. A key element of drivers interacting and relying on these systems is the handover of control between the vehicle and driver. This handover, occurring during times of automation error or inability to work properly, will be a critical point of high workload when driving a partially or fully automated vehicle. If the driver is aware of the system’s performance and can appropriately calibrate his or her trust, then these instances of handover may become less stressful and easier to complete successfully.
Prototype automation uncertainty displays have been shown to improve the handover between car and driver. Current displays however, have not focused on the information content and research based design of the displays to be given to the driver to optimize his or her understanding of the system’s performance throughout the drive. The current study will explore the driving performance, trust, visual scanning behaviors, perceived workload, and objective workload (through physiological measures of heart rate and pupil size) for handover scenarios. There will be four between-subjects display conditions: (1) no display; and reliability displays using (2) quantitative information (percentage of reliability); (3) qualitative information (direct representation of a number); and (4) representational information (abstract representation of a number).
Participants will complete two drives, the first of which will serve as a baseline for the study measures and as a training for the automated lane keeping system and reliability display (if present). The second drive will determine how the drivers react to a failure in the adaptive cruise control system. Results from this study will allow system designers to better understand the relationship between the presence or lack of different types of reliability displays and driving performance, trust, and workload, as well as the implications of automation failure and the time required to return to a baseline workload level. Presence of reliability displays is hypothesized to improve overall driving performance during handover situations, improve trust calibration, and improve situation awareness of the reliability of the system.
