Citation

Radhakrishnan V, Merat N, Louw T, Lenné MG, Romano R, Paschalidis E, Hajiseyedjavadi F, Wei C, Boer ER. Information (Basel) 2020; 11(8): e390.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/info11080390

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study investigated how driver discomfort was influenced by different types of automated vehicle (AV) controllers, compared to manual driving, and whether this response changed in different road environments, using heart-rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal activity (EDA). A total of 24 drivers were subjected to manual driving and four AV controllers: two modelled to depict “human-like” driving behaviour, one conventional lane-keeping assist controller, and a replay of their own manual drive. Each drive lasted for ~15 min and consisted of rural and urban environments, which differed in terms of average speed, road geometry and road-based furniture. Drivers showed higher skin conductance response (SCR) and lower HRV during manual driving, compared to the automated drives. There were no significant differences in discomfort between the AV controllers. SCRs and subjective discomfort ratings showed significantly higher discomfort in the faster rural environments, when compared to the urban environments. Our results suggest that SCR values are more sensitive than HRV-based measures to continuously evolving situations that induce discomfort. Further research may be warranted in investigating the value of this metric in assessing real-time driver discomfort levels, which may help improve acceptance of AV controllers.

Language: en

Keywords

discomfort; driver state; heart-rate variability (HRV); highly automated driving (HAD); psychophysiology; skin conductance response (SCR)