Interaction Design of Closed Dark Cabin Driving Interface based on Situation Awareness

Gong, Xiaodong; Yingxue, Yang; Liu, Yushun; Gong, Qian · 2023 · Crossref

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1003792

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

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Summary

This study addresses the critical challenge of maintaining driver situation awareness (SA) in closed dark cabin environments, such as those found in special military vehicles. In these scenarios, drivers lack direct visual access to the external environment, relying entirely on interface displays for navigation and hazard detection. This reliance often leads to reduced cognitive efficiency, increased workload, and diminished SA due to the absence of natural visual cues. The research aims to optimize the vehicle terminal interface design to enhance drivers' perception of environmental information, specifically focusing on distance perception, thereby improving overall system performance and safety. The methodology is grounded in Endsley’s three-level model of situation awareness, which comprises perception, understanding, and prediction. The authors analyzed the specific constraints of dark cabin driving, including weak external perception, driver fatigue from low-light conditions, and complex information loads. To address these issues, they developed an optimized interface design strategy featuring visual processing enhancements. Key design elements included abandoning parallel layouts for through-type layouts to increase immersion, using icons instead of text to reduce cognitive load, and implementing a color-coded visual grading system for distance warnings. Specifically, the interface provided green, yellow, and red visual markers with distance values when obstacles were within 30, 20, and 10 meters, respectively, along with early text warnings at 50 meters. To evaluate the effectiveness of this design, the researchers conducted a controlled experiment with 40 participants, divided into two groups of 20. Group 1 used the original interface without visual processing, while Group 2 used the optimized interface. The experiment simulated driving tasks where participants had to identify specific distance thresholds (30m, 20m, and 10m) and perform corresponding braking actions. Performance was measured using task completion times, error margins from standard times, and subjective SA levels assessed via the Situation Awareness Rating Technique (SART) scale. The results demonstrated that the optimized design significantly improved driver performance. Group 2 exhibited substantially lower error rates in timing their responses compared to Group 1, with their operation times closely matching the standard benchmarks. For instance, at the 20-meter threshold, Group 2’s error was zero seconds, whereas Group 1’s error was 1.64 seconds. Furthermore, Group 2 achieved a significantly higher average SART score (6.0) compared to Group 1 (4.25), indicating superior situation awareness. The study concludes that integrating visual processing strategies, particularly color-coded distance warnings and immersive layout designs, effectively enhances distance perception and situation awareness in closed dark cabin environments, reducing driver workload and improving operational accuracy.

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Topics

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• situational awareness
• automation
• mode awareness
• odd communication
• hud ar windshield
• ehmi external hmi

Information type

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• Applied Guidance: design guidelines
• Methodological Resource: tool software
• Theoretical Contribution: theory or model