A recognition phase Intervention Interface to Improve Naturalness of Autonomous Driving for Distracted Drivers

One of the challenges for the practical application of fully autonomous driving is accurately understanding the surrounding environment and achieving both safe and natural driving. Currently, drivers intervene in the vehicle's control to ensure safety, but there are a lot of challenges in taking over the control. One solution to this problem is to intervene in the recognition phase of the automated system and assist the naturalness or comfort of driving. In this study, we implemented the recognition phase intervention methods and conventional control-phase methods in a simulated driving environment. An experiment with 18 participants was conducted in this environment to evaluate the intervention performance and naturalness of driving. The participants were in an out-of-the-loop by imposing a sub-task. The results suggest that pointing and checking operation in recognition phase intervention is more effective to intervention performance than simple pushing button input. Furthermore, the recognition phase intervention is preferable to control-phase intervention because it imposes less workload on drivers.