Effects of unreliable automation and takeover time budget on young drivers’ mental workload

Author(s):  
Farzaneh Shahini ◽  
Junho Park ◽  
Maryam Zahabi

Young drivers are involved in a significantly higher number of crashes than any other age group. Highly automated vehicles are expected to improve traffic safety and reduce human errors; however, driver needs to take over in situations where the automation fails. A driving simulation study was conducted with twenty-eight young drivers to investigate the effects of unreliable automation, different takeover time budgets (TOTBs), and secondary tasks on mental workload during takeover situations. Mental workload was measured using a combination of physiological and secondary task performance measures. Results suggested that when faced with critical incidents, young drivers experienced lower mental workload under 10s of TOTB as compared to 5s or 8s of TOTB especially when they were engaged in a demanding secondary task. In addition, drivers experienced higher mental workload when regaining the control of the vehicle in the automated mode than the manual driving condition.

Author(s):  
Peter R. Bakhit ◽  
BeiBei Guo ◽  
Sherif Ishak

Distracted driving behavior is a perennial safety concern that affects not only the vehicle’s occupants but other road users as well. Distraction is typically caused by engagement in secondary tasks and activities such as manipulating objects and passenger interaction, among many others. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the increased crash/near-crash risk associated with different secondary tasks using the largest real-world naturalistic driving dataset (SHRP2 Naturalistic Driving Study). Several statistical and data-mining techniques were developed to analyze the distracted driving and crash risk. First, a bivariate probit model was constructed to investigate the relationship between engagement in a secondary task and the safety-critical events likelihood. Subsequently, two different techniques were implemented to quantify the increased crash/near-crash risk because of involvement in a particular secondary task. The first technique used the baseline-category logits model to estimate the increased crash risk in terms of conditional odds ratios. The second technique used the a priori association rule mining algorithm to reveal the risk associated with each secondary task in terms of support, confidence, and lift indexes. The results indicate that reaching for objects, manipulating objects, reading, and cell phone texting are the highest crash risk factors among various secondary tasks. Recognizing the effect of different secondary tasks on traffic safety in a real-world environment helps legislators enact laws that reduce crashes resulting from distracted driving, as well as enabling government officials to make informed decisions about the allocation of available resources to reduce roadway crashes and improve traffic safety.


Author(s):  
James Unverricht ◽  
Yusuke Yamani ◽  
Sarah Yahoodik ◽  
Jing Chen ◽  
William J. Horrey

Young drivers are particularly poor at maintaining attention to the forward roadway where imminent hazards may occur. Existing training programs such as FOrward Concentration and Attention Learning (FOCAL) have been shown to improve young drivers’ attention maintenance performance. The current study examines two competing hypotheses for the effectiveness of FOCAL: 1) Drivers disregard the secondary task to focus on maintaining attention, or 2) FOCAL improves drivers’ multitasking ability on the driving and the secondary tasks. FOCAL- and placebo-trained drivers navigated through four distinct scenarios in a driving simulator. During each scenario, they were asked to perform a secondary task interacting with a mock in-vehicle navigation system. Results showed that FOCAL improved driver attention maintenance performance and, surprisingly, their secondary task performance. These results suggest the possibility that FOCAL in fact increases not only their ability to maintain their attention to the forward roadway but also a drivers’ multitasking performance. Future works should use a variety of in-vehicle tasks with different visual processing demands to determine the generalizability of the current finding.


Author(s):  
Ying Wang ◽  
Xiang Guo ◽  
Yueyan Zhu ◽  
Jianqiao Zhang

With the increasing use of in-vehicle information system (IVIS), driver distraction, especially visual distraction, has increased dramatically. Evaluating the impact of IVIS on traffic safety is important. Previous studies have used various standard secondary-task methods in place of real IVIS interactions to obtain quantitative and scalable results. However, traditional visual secondary tasks, such as the Surrogate Reference Task (SuRT) and the Arrow Task, are insufficient to simulate incrementally increased workload with fine details or contrast difference. This study designed a new form of visual secondary task (Color Block Task, CoBT) that could provide appropriate difficulty, incremental complexity, and contrast option for visual distraction assessment. The validity of this method was tested in a driving simulator by analyzing the reaction time and accuracy of the CoBTs, the reaction time and accuracy of a Tactile Detection Response Task (TDRT), and drivers’ vehicle control performance. Results showed that CoBT is a valid tool to mock drivers’ in-vehicle visual demand. CoBT and TDRT performance can effectively distinguish the difficulty levels of CoBT and explain drivers’ attention allocation pattern to some extent.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hitoshi Sato ◽  
Tetsuya Miyashita ◽  
Hiromasa Kawakami ◽  
Yusuke Nagamine ◽  
Shunsuke Takaki ◽  
...  

The aim of this study was to reveal the effect of anesthesiologist’s mental workload during induction of general anesthesia. Twenty-two participants were categorized into anesthesiology residents (RA group,n=13) and board certified anesthesiologists (CA group,n=9). Subjects participated in three simulated scenarios (scenario A: baseline, scenario B: simple addition tasks, and scenario C: combination of simple addition tasks and treatment of unexpected arrhythmia). We used simple two-digit integer additions every 5 seconds as a secondary task. Four kinds of key actions were also evaluated in each scenario. In scenario C, the correct answer rate was significantly higher in the CA versus the RA group (RA: 0.370 ± 0.050 versus CA: 0.736 ± 0.051,p<0.01, 95% CI −0.518 to −0.215) as was the score of key actions (RA: 2.7 ± 1.3 versus CA: 4.0 ± 0.00,p=0.005). In a serious clinical situation, anesthesiologists might not be able to adequately perform both the primary and secondary tasks. This tendency is more apparent in young anesthesiologists.


Author(s):  
Holland M. Vasquez ◽  
Justin G. Hollands ◽  
Greg A. Jamieson

Some previous research using a new augmented reality map display called Mirror-in-the-Sky (MitS) showed that performance was worse and mental workload (MWL) greater with MitS relative to a track-up map for navigation and wayfinding tasks. The purpose of the current study was to determine—for both MitS and track-up map—how much performance improves and MWL decreases with practice in a simple navigation task. We conducted a three-session experiment in which twenty participants completed a route following task in a virtual environment. Task completion times and collisions decreased, subjective MWL decreased, and secondary task performance improved with practice. The NASA-TLX Global ratings and Detection Response Task Hit Rates showed a larger decrease in MWL with MitS than the track-up map. Additionally, means for performance and workload measures showed that differences between the MitS and track-up map decreased in the first session. In later sessions the differences between the MitS and track-up map were negligible. As such, with practice performance and MWL may be comparable to a traditional track-up map.


2011 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solomon A. Tadesse ◽  
Burt P. Kotler

Nubian ibex (Capra nubiana) prefer steep terrain in their landscape to reduce risks of predation and human nuisance disturbances. They also use vigilance and time allocation to manage risk of predation. We studied time budgets and habitat selection of Nubian ibex to: (1) identify the habitat variables to which Nubian ibex were behaviorally responsive; (2) investigate how time budget responses of Nubian ibex were related to season, slope condition, group size, and sex-age structure; and (3) develop behavioral-based models that account for the variations in the behaviors of Nubian ibex across the landscape and seasons.To quantify time budgets, we took regular field observations on focal individuals of Nubian ibex classified according to their habitat, group size, sex, and age. For each focal observation, we quantified environmental variables that were thought to influence the behavioral responses of ibex. Then, we developed behavioral models by correlating the proportion of behaviors measured in focal animal observations to the influential environmental variables. The behaviors of Nubian ibex significantly varied with sex and age structure, season, habitat type, and slope conditions. Adult females are more vigilant than adult male ibex, especially in the spring. This correlates with breeding and nursing activities. Based on the characteristics of the habitat, ibex behave to minimize risks of predation and human nuisance disturbances while maximizing their food intake.


2014 ◽  
Vol 488-489 ◽  
pp. 1130-1133
Author(s):  
Yuan Bai ◽  
Xiao Dong Tan

At present, the automobile industry is developing rapidly, the private car is widely popularized, and the hidden dangers of traffic safety exist. The phenomenon of drunk driving and fatigue driving becomes more and more serious, and the improvement for steering wheel could effectively prevent traffic accidents. This paper introduces and analyzes the intelligence of steering wheel in three major aspects, they respectively include intelligent grip detection, which tests if a driver is of fatigue driving; hart rate detection, which tests if a driver is in normal driving condition; alcohol detection, which tests if a driver drinks too much, and it predicts the possibility of accident from the drivers state, and timely gives out signal to warn the driver.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. 1440-1456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip L Morgan ◽  
Craig Williams ◽  
Fay M Ings ◽  
Nia C Hughes

Two experiments examined if exposure to emotionally valent image-based secondary tasks introduced at different points of a free recall working memory (WM) task impair memory performance. Images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) varied in the degree of negative or positive valance (mild, moderate, strong) and were positioned at low, moderate and high WM load points with participants rating them based upon perceived valence. As predicted, and based on previous research and theory, the higher the degree of negative (Experiment 1) and positive (Experiment 2) valence and the higher the WM load when a secondary task was introduced, the greater the impairment to recall. Secondary task images with strong negative valance were more disruptive than negative images with lower valence at moderate and high WM load task points involving encoding and/or rehearsal of primary task words (Experiment 1). This was not the case for secondary tasks involving positive images (Experiment 2), although participant valence ratings for positive IAPS images classified as moderate and strong were in fact very similar. Implications are discussed in relation to research and theory on task interruption and attentional narrowing and literature concerning the effects of emotive stimuli on cognition.


Author(s):  
Holger Luczak ◽  
Christopher M. Schlick ◽  
Nicole Jochems ◽  
Sebastian Vetter ◽  
Bernhard Kausch

The fast aging of many western and eastern societies and their increasing reliance on information technology create a compelling need to reconsider older users’ interactions with computers. Changes in perceptual and motor skill capabilities that often accompany the aging process bring important implications for the design of information input devices. This paper summarizes the results of a laboratory study with different information input device. Three different input devices –– mouse, touch screen and eye-gaze –– were analyzed concerning efficiency, effectiveness and mental workload with respect to the age group of the computer user. The results derived from data of 90 subjects between 20 and 75 years show that regardless of participant’s age group the best performance in terms of short execution time results from touch screen information input. This effect is even more pronounced for the elderly.


Author(s):  
Kunal Khanade ◽  
Farzan Sasangohar

Distracted driving while gaming is a serious hazard especially for young drivers. Increasing popularity of augmented reality games may increase distracted driving incidents. The main purpose of this study is to test the feasibility of an identification test to differentiate between drivers and passengers to prevent drivers from playing augmented reality games while driving to reduce distracted driving incidents. We hypothesized that increased cognitive burden will reduce vigilance on the secondary task which will reduce attention and increase the risk associated with the secondary task. An experiment with a driving simulator tested university students’ performance to evaluate the efficacy of the distinguishing test. The results show that the test shows promise to distinguish between drivers and passengers. Such tests can be used in applications when users perform two tasks that require the same modality leading to decreased performance in both tasks.


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