User-eXperience Values of Automatic Driving to Consider from Dual Tasks

Abstract

Aiming at an automated driving society in the near future, not only automobile manufacturers, but also many companies, research institutes, and administrations are active engaged in various initiatives. In order to realize automatic driving, problems such as technical problems and social acceptance system still have many problems. Meanwhile, there is great expectation for its attractive concept proposal. In society today, a lot of tragic traffic accidents are reported. The public’s interest is high in anticipation of a decrease in the number of traffic accidents caused by automatic driving. Automatic driving as a means of creating a safe automobile society is highly attractive. In this research, we focus on new experiential value by realizing automatic driving. In past driving of the car, it has been regarded as a dangerous act that the driver performs other work at the same time as driving. In this thesis, we consider the experiences by doing driving work and other work using the dual task method.

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

According to the development of technology, public interest in mobility automation has been increasing more and more. As expected from the near future, Toyota Motor announced the “e-Palette Concept” in 2018, the proposal of future automatic driving mobility will make us hopeful for the future that is not so far. These attractive proposals are located “level 4” within the level of automatic driving. If the next level 4 automatic driving society is the period of maturity, today’s automobile society where level 2 technology-equipped general cars are spreading to the market is the early stage. It seems that there will be a “transition period” of Level 3 automatic driving in which a car having the function of automatic driving and a situation where automobiles which are not so will be disturbed on the road will be created between them. The concept proposal that depicts the prospect of the period of maturity is beyond existing stereotype “cars are made by automobile manufacturers”, and it is made by many companies, research institutes, or administrations both domestically and abroad. On the other hand, however, the flexibility about proposals of automobiles in transition period is lower than in proposals of the period of maturity, and it seems that research on user experience in the interior space changed by the automatic operation seems not to be sufficient.

The average car age in Japan (the average of elapsed years since the car was first registered) is said to be 8.6 years at 2018. In today’s automotive society, cars with automatic driving functions and cars that are not doing are intertwined on the road. In the process of realizing a fully automated driving society expected in the future, it is important that how to coexist an automatic driving vehicle and a non-automatic driving vehicle. As an example, it is conceivable to provide lanes dedicated to automatic driving vehicles on highways.

In the proposal for the concept of an automated driving vehicle at the period of maturity, the driver is released from the constraints of driving, and the appearance of taking various actions other than driving inside a car is expressed by a concept movie released by automobile manufacturers. On the other hand, it is a dangerous act that the driver does other doing than driving while driving today’s car, it is not legally permitted. And there is not much debate on the possibility of what we can do about the behavior of the driver in the interior space during the transition period.

Looking at the drivers of automobiles running on public roads, we often see drivers who are driving while operating smartphones. Such an act called so-called “distract driving” is an act prohibited by the Road Traffic Act because there is a danger of leading to a traffic accident, and in case of a violation penalties are imposed. Despite these legal backgrounds, there are a lot of people who drive.

Automatic driving shifts the driving entity from the human being to the system, and the attention resources of human beings in driving work are reduced, so driver on automatic driving-car is bored, this time the risk of dozing during driving increases. In such a situation, if you can do other work at the driver’s seat, it will lead to more efficient living while preventing dozing. From the above, the possibility of a new experience value is felt for driving with dual tasks under automatic driving.

1.2 Purpose

In past theory of driving a car, the so-called “distract driving” which carries out a dual task during driving is considered dangerous and should not be done. On the other hand, however, when automatic driving is put to practical use in the future and widely penetrated into society, new rules on dual tasks during driving which are not confined by the existing legal framework may be developed. In this research, we examine the influence of dual tasks on human perception by using dual tasks with driving task as the main task against Level 3, which is considered to be the transition period in automatic driving technology, and the automatic level 3 environment Consider the possibilities in driving (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Conceptual diagram of this research

2 Hypothesis

In the multiple resource theory Wickens advocates, it is stated that not only a plurality of information processes performed at the same time necessarily share a single resource pool, and in a dual task situation, tasks in which processing resources compete and there are combinations that do not compete at all. [1] In this research, when processing sub-tasks that are performed at the same time as the main task of driving, we conduct experiments under the hypothesis that there is an influence on driving work due to differences in processing resources (Figs. 2 and 3).

Fig. 2.

Conceptual diagram of the multiple resource theory

Fig. 3.

Hypothesis about automatic driving of level 3 based on multiple resource theory

3 Experiment

3.1 Experimental Environment

For the experiment, racing game software “Gran Turismo 6” was used as a simulator, and operating environment was established by corrugated board assuming steering controller, seat and center console. Regarding the dimensions (Fig. 4), we referred to the interior packaging of a middle sedan type Japanese car (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4.

Driving simulation environment

Fig. 5.

Dimensions of center console

3.2 Participants

The participants were 4 students in their twenties, 2 men and 2 women. In addition, one of the participants in the experiment possessed the same racing game software as the driving simulator described later, and the skill level for the simulator was high.

3.3 Experimental Method

Participants wear a wearable eye tracker “Tobii Pro Glass 2”. First of all, They go around a course simulating an urban area on the simulator as usual. After that, as you go around the course as well, ask the sub tasks (Experiment 1, Experiment 2) designated at the same time as driving work. In order to operate the driving simulator, Experimenter asked to run on the course while maintaining the speed at 50 [km/h] from 40 [km/h] to 60 [km/h] on the speed display (Fig. 6) Measure the gaze point during that and observe the behavior of the driver. Data obtained through experiments were analyzed with analysis software “Tobii Pro Lab”, and a heat map was prepared based on the gaze point measurement results obtained.

Fig. 6.

Experimental method

3.4 Experiment 1: Influence on Operation Task When Smartphone Operation Is a Sub Task

Participants wearing an eye tracker goes around a course simulating an urban area on the simulator as usual. In the same way after getting around the course in the same way, ask the smartphone of the experiment participant to send a call once without notifying it beforehand, and ask the conversation to respond. After the end of the conversation, another message of the question format was transmitted in the message application “LINE”, and a response was requested to it. Measure the gaze point during that and observe the behavior of the driver.

3.5 Experiment 2: Influence on Operation Task When Drinking and Eating Are Sub Tasks

Participants wearing eye tracker go around the course. Among them, as a drinking action, they open a PET bottle drink placed on the center console from an unopened state and have it drink properly.

After that, we asked the experiment participants to go around the course again and let opened the bag confectionery placed on the center console as an act of eating and eat as needed.

4 Results

4.1 Results of Experiment 1

The measurement result of the fixation point during normal operation is shown. (Figure 7) Next, the measurement results of gazing points by the dual task of driving operation and smartphone operation are shown. (Figure 8) The results showed that the gazing point was on the traveling road. But tended to increase to the speed indication at the lower left of the screen compared with the case of only the driving work. Also, from the behavior, there was a tendency that the speed adjustment in the operation accompanying the smartphone operation became more difficult than in the case of the driving operation alone.

Fig. 7.

Driving

Fig. 8.

Driving with smartphone operation

4.2 Results of Experiment 2

The measurement results of the gaze point by the dual task of driving operation and act of drinking PET bottle drink (Fig. 9) and eating bag confectionery (Fig. 10) are shown. From the results, no change in gaze point like the previous experiment was seen, and behavior did not have a big influence on driving work by eating and drinking even from the behavior.

Fig. 9.

Driving with drinking

Fig. 10.

Driving with eating

Some experiment participants tended to increase the speed display in the lower left of the screen of the simulator and the gaze point of the speedometer in the lower center. Some of the participants in the experiment also gazed at the map display on the upper left of the screen of the simulator.

5 Discussion

In common with driving tasks not involving dual tasks and driving tasks involving smartphone operations, gaze points are gathered in the speed indication, and they were making a travel that adjusts the speed a little by conscious of the speed maintenance instruction Conceivable.

Also, due to reception of incoming calls and messages, the influence on the speed adjustment of the car was seen. Compared to when only driving work was done, in addition to not being able to confirm the speed display on the screen constantly in the field of view as a line of sight directed to the smartphone, in addition to the consciousness of operation of the accelerator/brake by the operation of the smartphone It is thought that it is caused by the fact that it became unclear. Drivers who did not see a collision against the course wall due to wobbling associated with the use of smartphones had operated the smartphone at the middle of the steering wheel and the body. One of the factors is that the line-of-sight trace on the simulator screen and the smartphone screen was short.

In Experiment 1, when performing a dual task of simultaneously executing sub-tasks of operation of a smartphone against a main task of operation task including operation of steering wheel and adjustment of accelerator/brake, problems with operation of the accelerator and the brake However, no obstacles were found in steering wheel operation and smartphone operation. In the level 3 automatic driving environment, the problem in this experiment may be solved by entering system control for steering wheel operation and accelerator/brake adjustment. From this, it can be said that driving is possible while operating the smartphone in the level 3 automatic driving environment if the driver can always return to operation (Figure 11).

Fig. 11.

Result of dual task in Experiment 1

As a result of the dual tasks of driving tasks on the driver, the possibility that the difference in resource pool to attention may be related is obtained. The influence appeared on the adjustment of the speed in the main task of driving task was a sub-task of “operation of smartphone” conducted as a dual task. This is due to the fact that these two tasks are working with the same caution resource, and because it was a resource pool different from the “drink” and “eat” actions of sub tasks. It seems that the influence did not appear in the dual task (see Fig. 12).

Fig. 12.

Result of dual task in Experiment 1 and 2

6 Conclusion

In this research, when proposing new experiential value in level 3 automatic operation, we investigated and studied what kind of actions and actions affect the driving from the gazing points and behaviors of the driver at the time of driving. Then, we aimed to consider the new experience value obtained under automatic driving situation.

In past driving, humans assumed a variety of events for safe driving and paid a lot of attention. However, along with the practical use of Level 3 automatic operation in the near future, new experience value can be found there by the system control that the clearance in attention is born more than ever. By thinking over these verifications on sub-tasks against the main task of driving, we thought that we could connect to driver’s interface suggestion in automatic driving from a cognitive point of view.

And in this research, we conducted experiments on the element of dual task which is considered to be a key point when proposing experience value in automatic operation of level 3 environment. In actual proposal, it is necessary to conduct more specific verification experiment based on the finding obtained in this experiment result.