Designing human-machine communication to aid driver's situation awareness in smart vehicles

Abstract

Automotive manufacturers are developing various sensors for improving the driver's situation awareness (SA) while driving. Smart vehicles are being developed which employ such sensors for gathering information associated with various situations and communicating the situation information to the driver. If the smart vehicles have advanced functionality, they can collect more complex information, and the amount of situation information will increase. SA is crucial for safe and efficient driving. While performing primary driving tasks, drivers should constantly maintain SA by checking for potential hazards. However, owing to limited cognitive abilities, drivers may find it difficult to process various types of complex situation information while driving. It is thus necessary to examine the communication between humans and machines in the context of SA while driving a smart vehicle. Hence, to analyse the communication between humans and machines in the context of SA, the proposed study comprises four research objectives. The first objective involves understanding aspects such as human cognition while driving, the current state-of-the- art aiding systems, and the definition of SA and associated issues. The second objective includes analysing driving tasks in the context of cognitive engineering for understanding how humans can communicate with machines to achieve SA. The third objective involves developing a method of communication between humans and machines so that communication can be achieved by employing the SA aiding system. The fourth objective includes verifying the proposed method of communication between humans and machines. This dissertation contributes to the analysis of human driving tasks in the context of cognition and the study of new SA design guidelines on the basis of human cognitive states associated with smart vehicle driving.