Studying Effects of Up- and Downlink Latency on Remote Driving Using Teledriving Simulation

Remote driving allows to control a vehicle from a distance by a remote operator. Remote drivers use video feeds and sensor data to understand the current driving situation and to generate control commands. Remote driving raises several human-factor challenges. One of these challenges is remote drivers' ability to deal with time delays in the communication between teleoperated vehicle and operator workstation. By using a teledriving simulator, a subject study with N = 20 participants was conducted to examine the effect of different up- and downlink latencies on remote drivers ‘ behavior, workload, and driving performance. The results show that latencies of 200 ms increase driving effort to keep the vehicle in the lane and cause higher workload. Effects on driving performance are weak due to compensation behavior (braking and speed reduction). Different effects of up- and downlink latencies do not become apparent. The implications of the results regarding human-factors research of remote driving are discussed. Furthermore, future approaches and research tools to empirically analyze remote driving are considered.