From Awareness to Intent: Mitigating Silent Driving System Failures through Prospective Situation Awareness Enhancing Interfaces

TL;DR

This study explores how augmented reality interfaces can improve driver awareness and response during silent automation failures in semi-autonomous vehicles, emphasizing perceptual cues and system intent communication.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates PSAE interfaces using AR head-up displays to enhance driver situational awareness and safety during silent system failures.

Findings

Perceptual cues significantly improve situational awareness.

Communicating system intent enhances driver trust.

Neuroactivity correlates with situational awareness.

Abstract

Silent automation failures, where a system fails to detect a hazard without warning, pose a critical safety challenge for partially automated vehicles. While research has mostly focused on takeover requests, how to support a driver in silent failure remains underexplored. We conducted a multi-modal driving simulator study with 48 participants to investigate how different Prospective Situation Awareness Enhancement (PSAE) interfaces, delivered via augmented reality head-up display, affect takeover performance. By integrating behavioral, subjective psychological, and physiological data, our analysis suggests that situational awareness (SA) serves as an important moderating factor through which PSAE interfaces improve takeover performance. Further, we found that providing perceptual cues was most effective in enhancing SA, while communicating system intent was superior for building trust. Finally, we identified a potential correlate of SA in the neuroactivity. Overall, this paper contributes to understanding how transparency-oriented interfaces may support drivers and provides design insights into HMI design for silent failures.