What's Around the Corner? Enhancing Driver Awareness in Autonomous Vehicles via In-Vehicle Spatial Auditory Displays

There is currently a distinct lack of design consideration associated with autonomous vehicles and their impact on human factors. Research has yet to consider fully the impact felt by the driver when he/she is no longer in control of the vehicle [12]. We propose that spatialised auditory feedback could be used to enhance driver awareness to the intended actions of autonomous vehicles. We hypothesise
that this feedback will provide drivers with an enhanced sense of control. This paper presents a driving simulator study where 5 separate auditory feedback methods are compared during both autonomous and manual driving scenarios. We found that our spatialised auditory
presentation method alerted drivers to the intended actions of autonomous vehicles much more than all other methodsand they felt significantly more in control during scenarios containing sound vs. no sound. Finally, that overall workload in autonomous vehicle scenarios was lower compared to manual vehicle scenarios.