Using a Vibrotactile Seat for Facilitating the Handover of Control during Automated Driving

Studies have found that drivers tend to neglect their surrounding traffic during automated driving. This may lead to a late and inefficient resumption of control in case of handover of the driving task to the driver. The authors evaluated the effectiveness of a vibrotactile seat displaying spatial information regarding vehicles approaching from behind to enhance the driver preparedness to the handover of control. A simulator experiment, involving 26 participants, showed that when drivers were required to regain control of the vehicle, having a vibrotactile seat improved speed and efficiency of reactions in scenarios requiring lane changing immediately following a handover. In addition, eye-tracking analysis showed that the participants had more systematic scan patterns of the mirrors in the first two seconds following the transition of control request. Interestingly, this effect exists in-spite of the finding that during automated driving mode, having a vibrotactile display led to fewer glances at the road.