Effect of Traveling Speed on Visual Processing During Self-driving of Personal Mobility Vehicle

The application of self-driving technology to personal mobility vehicles (PMVs) is being investigated. Passengers of self-driving PMVs will likely be engaged in activities with visual processing, such as operating smartphones. Thus, self-driving PMVs need to consider the possibility that passengers will perform these activities and the ease of performing these activities. However, little research has considered such passengers' convenience when using self-driving PMVs as a service. It is known that visual information is particularly dominant among input information to human beings. As was observed in previous works, changes in the surrounding environment due to moving may negatively impact the passenger's main activities with visual information processing. The traveling speed affects these changes in the surrounding, and it is a parameter of self-driving methods. Therefore, this paper aims to grasp the effect of traveling speed on passengers' visual processing during self-driving of PMVs to realize self-driving PMVs on which passengers can easily process information. The effect of the traveling speed of self-driving PMV on task performance and mental workload of passengers' visual processing was investigated by conducting a simulator experiment. The results showed that although the task performance is maintained, the mental workload of visual processing increases when the PMV moves compared to the stopping condition. Moreover, it was suggested that the visual input of the changing environment and the passenger's gaze behavior influence the increase in mental workload.