Design and Evaluation of Remote Driving Architecture on 4G and 5G Mobile Networks

Despite the progress in the development of automated vehicles in the last decade, reaching the level of reliability required at large-scale deployment at an economical price and combined with safety requirements is still a long road ahead. In certain use cases, such as automated shuttles and taxis, where there is no longer even a steering wheel and pedals required, remote driving could be implemented to bridge this gap; a remote operator can take control of the vehicle in situations where it is too difficult for an automated system to determine the next actions. In logistics, it could even be implemented to solve already more pressing issues such as shortage of truck drivers, by providing more flexible working conditions and less standstill time of the truck. An important aspect of remote driving is the connection between the remote station and the vehicle. With the current roll-out of 5G mobile technology in many countries throughout the world, the implementation of remote driving comes closer to large-scale deployment. 5G could be a potential game-changer in the deployment of this technology. In this work, we examine the remote driving application and network-level performance of remote driving on a recently deployed sub-6-GHz commercial 5G stand-alone (SA) mobile network. It evaluates the influence of the 5G architecture, such as mobile edge computing (MEC) integration, local breakout, and latency on the application performance of remote driving. We describe the design, development (based on Hardware-in-the-Loop simulations), and performance evaluation of a remote driving solution, tested on both 5G and 4G mobile SA networks using two different vehicles and two different remote stations. Two test cases have been defined to evaluate the application and network performance and are evaluated based on position accuracy, relative reaction times, and distance perception. Results show the performance of the network to be sufficient for remote driving applications at relatively low speeds (<40 km/h). Network latencies compared with 4G have dropped to half. A strong correlation between latency and remote driving performance is not clearly seen and requires further evaluation taking into account the influence of the user interface.

The over-estimation of distance for self-voice versus other-voice

Self-related stimuli are important cues for people to recognize themselves in the external world and hold a special status in our perceptual system. Self-voice plays an important role in daily social communication and is also a frequent input for self-identification. Although many studies have been conducted on the acoustic features of self-voice, no research has ever examined the spatial aspect, although the spatial perception of voice is important for humans. This study proposes a novel perspective for studying self-voice. We investigated people’s distance perception of their own voice when the voice was heard from an external position. Participants heard their own voice from one of four speakers located either 90 or 180 cm from their sitting position, either immediately after uttering a short vowel (i.e., active session) or hearing the replay of their own pronunciation (i.e., replay session). They were then asked to indicate which speaker they heard the voice from. Their voices were either pitch-shifted by ± 4 semitones (i.e., other-voice condition) or unaltered (i.e., self-voice condition). The results of spatial judgment showed that self-voice from the closer speakers was misattributed to that from the speakers further away at a significantly higher proportion than other-voice. This phenomenon was also observed when the participants remained silent and heard prerecorded voices. Additional structural equation modeling using participants’ schizotypal scores showed that the effect of self-voice on distance perception was significantly associated with the score of delusional thoughts (Peters Delusion Inventory) and distorted body image (Perceptual Aberration Scale) in the active speaking session but not in the replay session. The findings of this study provide important insights for understanding how people process self-related stimuli when there is a small distortion and how this may be linked to the risk of psychosis.

Distance Perception in the Oculus Quest and Oculus Quest 2

Distances in virtual environments (VEs) viewed on a head-mounted display (HMD) are typically underperceived relative to the intended distance. This paper presents an experiment comparing perceived egocentric distance in a real environment with that in a matched VE presented in the Oculus Quest and Oculus Quest 2. Participants made verbal judgments and blind walking judgments to an object on the ground. Both the Quest and Quest 2 produced underperception compared to the real environment. Verbal judgments in the VE were 86\% and 79\% of real world judgments in the Quest and Quest 2, respectively. Blind walking judgments were 78% and 79% of real world judgments in the Quest and Quest 2, respectively. This project shows that significant underperception of distance persists even in modern HMDs.

How Does Approaching a Lead Vehicle and Monitoring Request Affect Drivers’ Takeover Performance? A Simulated Driving Study with Functional MRI

With the popularization and application of conditionally automated driving systems, takeover requirements are becoming more and more frequent, and the subsequent takeover safety problems have attracted attention. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, combined with driving simulation experiments, to study in depth the effects of critical degree and monitor request (MR) 30 s in advance on drivers’ visual behavior, takeover performance and brain activation. Results showed that MR can effectively improve the driver’s visual and takeover performance, including visual reaction times, fixation frequency and duration, takeover time, and takeover mode. The length of the reserved safety distance can significantly affect the distribution of longitudinal acceleration. Critical or non-critical takeover has a significant impact on the change of pupil diameter and the standard deviation of lateral displacement. Five brain regions, including the middle occipital gyrus (MOG), fusiform gyrus (FG), middle temporal gyrus (MTG), precuneus and precentral, are activated under the stimulation of a critical takeover scenario, and are related to cognitive behaviors such as visual cognition, distance perception, memory search and movement association.

Effect of Environment-Related Cues on Auditory Distance Perception in the Context of Audio-Only Augmented Reality

Audio-only augmented reality consists of enhancing a real environment with virtual sound events. A seamless integration of the virtual events within the environment requires processing them with artificial spatialization and reverberation effects that simulate the acoustic properties of the room. However, in augmented reality, the visual and acoustic environment of the listener may not be fully mastered. This study aims to gain some insight into the acoustic cues (intensity and reverberation) that are used by the listener to form an auditory distance judgment, and to observe if these strategies can be influenced by the listener’s environment. To do so, we present a perceptual evaluation of two distance-rendering models informed by a measured Spatial Room Impulse Response. The choice of the rendering methods was made to design stimuli categories in which the availability and reproduction quality of acoustic cues are different. The proposed models have been evaluated in an online experiment gathering 108 participants who were asked to provide judgments of auditory distance about a stationary source. To evaluate the importance of environmental cues, participants had to describe the environment in which they were running the experiment, and more specifically the volume of the room and the distance to the wall they were facing. It could be shown that these context cues had a limited, but significant, influence on the perceived auditory distance.

Distance Compression in the HTC Vive Pro: A Quick Revisitation of Resolution

Spatial perception in immersive virtual environments, particularly regarding distance perception, is a well-studied topic in virtual reality literature. Distance compression, or the underestimation of distances, is and has been historically prevalent in all virtual reality systems. The problem of distance compression still remains open, but recent advancements have shown that as systems have developed, the level of distance compression has decreased. Here, we add evidence to this trend by beginning the assessment of distance compression in the HTC Vive Pro. To our knowledge, there are no archival results that report any findings about distance compression in this system. Using a familiar paradigm for studying distance compression in virtual reality hardware, we asked users to blind walk to a target object placed in a virtual environment and assessed their judgments based on those distances. We find that distance compression in the HTC Vive Pro mirrors that of the HTC Vive. Our results are not particularly surprising, considering the nature of the differences between the two systems, but they lend credence to the finding that resolution does not affect distance compression. More extensive study should be performed to reinforce these results.

Changes of Locomotion Speed Affect Distance Estimations in Virtual Reality

Modern Virtual Reality (VR) applications often use artificial locomotion to allow users to travel distances within VR space that exceed the available space used to transfer real-world and real-time motion into the virtual environment. The locomotion speed is usually not fixed and can be selected dynamically by the user. Due to motion adaptation effects, variations of locomotion speed could affect how distances in VR are perceived. In the context of cartographic VR applications aimed to experience and communicate spatial information, such effects on distance perception could be problematic, because they might lead to distortions in cognitive representations of space acquired via interaction with VR environments. By conducting a VR-based distance estimation study, we demonstrate how changes of artificial locomotion speed affect distance estimations in VR. Increasing locomotion speeds after letting users adapt to a lower locomotion speed led to lower distance estimations and decreasing locomotion speeds led to higher distance estimations. These findings should sensitize VR developers to consider the choice of applied locomotion techniques when a developed VR application is supposed to communicate distance information or to support the acquisition of a cognitive representation of geographic space.

Psychoacoustic Principle, Methods, and Problems with Perceived Distance Control in Spatial Audio

One purpose of spatial audio is to create perceived virtual sources at various spatial positions in terms of direction and distance with respect to the listener. The psychoacoustic principle of spatial auditory perception is essential for creating perceived virtual sources. Currently, the technical means for recreating virtual sources in different directions of various spatial audio techniques are relatively mature. However, perceived distance control in spatial audio remains a challenging task. This article reviews the psychoacoustic principle, methods, and problems with perceived distance control and compares them with the principles and methods of directional localization control in spatial audio, showing that the validation of various methods for perceived distance control depends on the principle and method used for spatial audio. To improve perceived distance control, further research on the detailed psychoacoustic mechanisms of auditory distance perception is required.

Obstacles Affect Perceptions of Egocentric Distances in Virtual Environments

Distance perception in humans can be affected by oculomotor and optical cues and a person’s action capability in a given environment, known as action-specific effects. For example, a previous study has demonstrated that egocentric distance estimation to a target is affected by the width of a transparent barrier placed in the intermediate space between a participant and a target. However, the characteristics of a barrier’s width that affect distance perception remain unknown. Therefore, we investigated whether visual and tactile inputs and actions related to a barrier affect distance estimation to a target behind the barrier. The results confirmed previous studies by demonstrating that visual and tactile presentations of the barrier’s width affected distance estimation to the target. However, this effect of the barrier’s width was not observed when the barrier was touchable but invisible nor when the barrier was visible but penetrable. These findings indicate the complexity of action-specific effects and the difficulty of identifying necessary information for inducing these effects.