Reading During Fully Automated Driving: A Study of the Effect of Peripheral Visual and Haptic Information on Situation Awareness and Mental Workload
DOI: 10.1109/tits.2022.3165192
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Summary
This study investigates how peripheral visual and haptic information affects situation awareness (SA) and mental workload for occupants of fully automated vehicles (FAVs) engaged in non-driving related tasks, specifically reading. As FAVs allow passengers to focus on secondary tasks, maintaining SA regarding the vehicle’s navigational intentions remains crucial for comfort and safety. The authors hypothesized that providing information about upcoming lateral movements via peripheral displays would enhance SA and reduce mental workload compared to no such information. The experiment involved 18 participants who experienced three within-subject conditions in a real-road environment using a modified vehicle simulating FAV behavior: a control condition (no peripheral information), a visual condition using a Visual Peripheral Information System (VPIS), and a haptic condition using a Haptic Peripheral Information System (HPIS). The VPIS utilized LED arrays on a tablet to signal upcoming turns, while the HPIS employed vibrotactile motors on the forearms and movable seat backrests to physically indicate direction and counteract centrifugal forces. Participants read texts on a tablet during 15-minute rides involving 38 corners. Data were collected using the Situation Awareness Rating Technique (SART), Rating Scale Mental Effort (RSME), viewing behavior cameras, and reading performance questionnaires. Results indicated that both peripheral information systems significantly enhanced overall situation awareness compared to the control condition. This improvement was driven by a statistically significant reduction in attentional demand and, for the haptic condition only, a significant increase in attentional supply. However, neither system significantly reduced mental workload as measured by RSME; in fact, the haptic condition showed a significant decrease in RSME scores, but power analysis suggested the sample size was insufficient to confirm this effect robustly. Regarding reading performance, there were no significant differences between conditions, indicating that the peripheral displays did not impair the primary task. Viewing behavior analysis revealed that participants in the control condition looked away from their reading material more frequently to monitor the environment, whereas those with peripheral displays maintained focus on their tasks. The study concludes that peripheral visual and haptic displays effectively support situation awareness in FAVs without degrading reading performance. While the hypothesis that these systems would reduce mental workload was not fully supported, the reduction in attentional demand suggests that peripheral cues allow users to process navigational information more efficiently than by interrupting their primary task. The findings imply that haptic feedback, which provides both directional cues and physical support, may offer superior information supply compared to visual cues alone. These results contribute to the design of user interfaces for automated driving, emphasizing the value of ambient, non-intrusive information channels for maintaining passenger comfort and awareness.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| archive | success | unpaywall | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-09 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 3 | 2026-08-10 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| enrich | success | semantic_scholar | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-08-09 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-nvidia | summ-v5 | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 10 | 2026-08-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-08-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-nvidia on 2026-08-10; verification: verified.
Topics
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- situational awareness
- peripheral attention
- useful field of view
- passenger motion sickness comfort
- mode awareness
- road complexity
Information type
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- Applied Guidance: design guidelines
- Theoretical Contribution: theory or model, conceptual framework