Announcing Automated Lane Changes: Active Vehicle Roll Motions as Feedback for the Driver

ABSTRACT

As supervisor of the automation system during partially automated driving, it is essential for the driver to have a good awareness of the automation to fulfill this new task sufficiently. Therefore, feedback about intentions of the automation, for example lane changes, is crucial. So far, this feedback is mainly presented visually to the driver. Conversely, in this article, feedback for announcing lane changes is realized via active vehicle roll motions. Several designs are implemented in an automated test vehicle and are evaluated in four different driving scenarios on a test track. Totally, 39 participants rated the vehicle roll motions, for example, regarding the items roll direction, intensity, usefulness, and the predictability of the driving behavior. The results show that active roll motions as feedback for announcing automated lane changes should be clearly perceptible and are considered useful, not misleading, and support the drivers regarding their mode/system awareness.

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend a big “thank you” to my colleagues, in particular Stephan Bültjes and Stefan Sandig, for their assistance with the test vehicle hardware and software.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by AUDI AG.

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Cramer

Stephanie Cramer studied Mechanical Engineering, TU Munich. She has been a PhD candidate within the Chair of Ergonomics, TU Munich since 2015 and is part of the Pre-Development of Automated Driving, AUDI AG. Her research focus is on active vehicle pitch and roll motions as feedback for drivers during automated driving.

Jana Klohr

Jana Klohr graduated with the Master’s Degree in Psychology with a focus on Engineering and Business Psychology from the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany in 2017. Her master’s thesis was in the field of active vehicle roll motions as feedback during automated driving and was carried out in cooperation with AUDI AG.