Exploring the Effects of Individual Differences on Tactile Display Perception in Automated Vehicles

Current automated vehicles may require drivers to transition to manual driving (i.e., takeover) when encountering certain driving conditions, such as entering a construction zone. This takeover task can be more challenging in urban areas where it requires drivers to perceive and process environment information, such as surrounding vehicle positions and status, pedestrians, road signs, and traffic lights in a very short period of time. In this case, assistive technology that can present real-time driving instructions to navigate drivers to takeover and avoid obstacles may be necessary. A tactile display can be a reliable option in data-rich driving environments where drivers’ visual and auditory modalities may be overloaded. Therefore, the goal of this project is to design and test meaningful tactile patterns as an assistive interface, as well as to compare individual differences in interpreting tactile information during automated driving. A human-subject experiment will be conducted in a simulated automated vehicle.