The Effect of Directional Tactile Guidance on Takeover Performance in Level 3 Automated Driving

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Automated driving is an important development direction of the current automotive industry. Level 3 automated driving allows the driver to perform non-driving related tasks (NDRTs) during automated driving, however, once the operating conditions exceed the designed operating domain, the driver is still required to take over. Therefore, it is important to rationally design takeover requests (TORs) in Level 3 conditional automated driving. This paper investigates the effect of directional tactile guidance on driver takeover performance in emergency obstacle avoidance scenarios during the transfer of control from automated driving mode to manual driving. 18 participants drove a Level 3 conditional automated driving vehicle in a driving simulator on a two-way four-lane urban road, performed a takeover, and avoided obstacles while performing non-driving related tasks. The driver's takeover performance during the takeover process was measured and subjective driver evaluation data was collected via a questionnaire, which was subsequently statistically analyzed. The following conclusions were obtained: under the vibrotactile takeover request that provides away-from-danger direction information, the driver's takeover time is significantly lower than that of the vibrotactile takeover request that does not provide direction information; the vibrotactile takeover request that provides away-from-danger direction information is better than that of the vibrotactile takeover request that does not provide direction information in terms of the interaction experience and emotional experience, as well as the user experience, with a significant difference. This study provides a reference for the design of Level 3 automated driving takeover requests, significantly improving the operational safety of Level 3 automated driving vehicles.</div></div>