Information Needs and Visual Attention during Urban, Highly Automated Driving—An Investigation of Potential Influencing Factors
DOI: 10.3390/info11020062
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This study investigates the information needs and visual attention of passengers during highly automated driving (SAE Level 4) in complex urban environments. While previous research focused on highway scenarios or lower automation levels where drivers must remain fallback operators, this work addresses a gap regarding urban driving, where the passenger is no longer required to monitor the system or take over control. The authors aimed to determine what information passengers desire in this context and how two specific factors—experience with automated driving and engagement in non-driving related activities (NDRAs)—influence these needs and visual behavior. The researchers conducted a driving simulator study with 40 participants, divided into experienced and inexperienced groups based on their professional background in automated driving research. The experimental design was a 2 × 2 × 7 factorial setup, manipulating experience and NDRA engagement (with or without) as between-subject factors, while participants experienced seven different urban driving scenarios as a within-subject factor. The human-machine interface (HMI) displayed basic information: system status, navigation data, current speed, and speed limits. Data collection involved subjective questionnaires after each scenario, where participants rated the importance of displayed information and requested additional data. Objective data were gathered via eye-tracking to measure the visual attention ratio, defined as the percentage of time spent looking at the instrument cluster versus the windshield. The results revealed that participants requested information beyond the basic HMI display, specifically seeking details about upcoming maneuvers, reasons for those maneuvers, environmental settings, and additional navigation data. Regarding the influencing factors, visual attention was significantly affected by the presence of an NDRA, with participants engaging in secondary tasks looking less at the instrument cluster. However, experience with automated driving had no significant effect on visual attention. Furthermore, neither experience nor NDRA engagement significantly influenced the participants' stated information needs. The authors concluded that differences in information requirements appear to stem from individual passenger preferences rather than the tested variables of experience or activity engagement. The significance of these findings lies in the design of HMIs for highly automated urban vehicles. Since passengers do not need to act as fallback operators, the study suggests that HMI design should prioritize communicating vehicle intentions and environmental context to build trust and comfort, rather than focusing on system monitoring for safety-critical takeovers. The lack of effect from experience implies that HMI designs should not assume that familiarity reduces the need for information. Instead, interfaces should accommodate individual variability in information needs. The study highlights that while NDRAs reduce visual attention to the dashboard, they do not reduce the desire for information, suggesting that critical information must be presented in ways that remain accessible even when passengers are distracted.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| archive | success | openalex | — | — | 5 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-18 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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