Dynamic Object Concealment Processing Methods for Autonomous Vehicle Stress Reduction and Situational Awareness

Passengers in autonomous vehicles need to perceive information about the position and size of external objects. This study investigates how hiding external object information can help reduce passenger stress. We propose four image processing patterns, including semi-transparent, bounding box, shadow, and fully concealed, to reduce the amount of visual information while preserving object position and size information to reduce stress and improve situational understanding. We categorized external stressors according to passengers’ stress levels and the need for an immediate understanding of the stressors using a VR-HMD simulator. This was done through subjective evaluations based on stress reduction and situation awareness questionnaires. The results from 20 subjects showed that the compatibility index was lower in the group with a higher need for immediate situation awareness compared to the group that prioritized confidentiality. This supports the idea that stressors requiring immediate awareness require both information reduction and situation awareness.