Towards an On-Line Assessment of Subjective Driver Workload

The number of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) integrated in modern cars has grown over the last few years (e.g., BAS, ACC, navigation systems). Because car manufacturers must ensure that all these systems are compatible with the driving task, evaluation using an experimental protocol is often necessary. When analyzing data from such evaluations, the driving context must be accurately taken into account since it has an important influence on the driving task. Thus, the method for assessing “mental workload” are considered useful tools, as they can take both the driving context (e.g., kind of road, traffic, weather conditions) and the use of ADAS into account. Though subjective work load assessment methods have proved quite sensitive in many studies, they are not well suited to on-line assessment. To solve this problem, the authors have adapted the Instantaneous Self Assessment (ISA) method, initially developed for air traffic control, for use during the driving task. An experiment was conducted on the SHERPA full-size driving simulator. Fourteen subjects were asked to complete the same 30-kilometer run twice, once with an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC; a kind of ADAS) and once without. The route comprised stretched on motorways, major roads, and included various traffic densities. The ISA scale was quite sensitive to traffic conditions. Moreover, ISA highlighted the prevailing influence to traffic density over road profile. However, the impact of ADAS use could not be ascertained. This study constitutes a first step toward the development of a new on-line workload assessment technique based on an automatic classification system able to take several indicators into account, including vehicle indicators (e.g., speed, brake ad clutch pedals) and driver indicators (e.g., eye-glaze position.

• Corporate Authors:

  National Advanced Driving Simulator

  University of Iowa, 2401 Oakdale Boulevard
  Iowa City, IA  United States  52242-5003
• Authors:
  • Girard, J M
  • Wilczyk, M
  • Barloy, Y
  • Simon, P
  • Popieul, J C
• Conference:
  • Driving Simulation Conference, North America 2005 (DSC-NA 2005)
  • Location: Orlando FL, United States
  • Date: 2005-11-30 to 2005-12-2
• Publication Date: 2005

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 10p
• Monograph Title: Driving Simulation Conference, North America 2005

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous intelligent cruise control; Drivers; Driving simulators; Human factors in crashes; Navigation systems; Sensitivity analysis; Workload
• Identifier Terms: National Advanced Driving Simulator
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I80: Accident Studies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01141026
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 30 2009 7:53AM