Driver-Aware Interruptions of Dialog-based HCI Demands in Cars (Hyundai, DRAPER)

This project investigates how dialog-based HCI demands interact with driver interruptibility. We are refining our key technology, obtained from Project 1 in this document, to predict the duration of driver interruptibility. Understanding duration will allow us to design intelligent in-vehicle systems that respond to how drivers behave across moments of interruptibility. We will examine sensor data streams collected around drivers and in vehicles to identify the most appropriate interruptive information type and modality according to context.

Figure 12. Dual-task test-bed - Primary task (PT) is vigilance task with field driving video clips (obtained from the 1^st stage); and Secondary task (ST) is inspection task with a structured sequence of simulated visual, auditory, and haptic interruptions.

Our experiment includes computer-driven interruptions of dialog-based HCI demands and/or context-sensitive information (e.g., route guidance or road hazard information). We have drivers receive this information in opportune interruptible moments and in manners that support perception and cognitive interpretation. The experiment consists of two stages:

In the first (and most complete) stage of the experiment, we are conducting a field driving experiment followed by a ground-truth labeling session. In this stage, we collect a broad range of multimedia data, on-board diagnostic data, wearable sensor data, and participants’ ESM responses during naturalistic field driving. The collected data has helped us build a test-bed for the next stage that simulates various situations where driver interruptibility and various dialog-based HCI demands conflict with each other.

In the second stage, we will conduct a lab-based human-subject experiment to compare contextual attributes for interruptible timings and interruptible duration, driver interruptibility in conversational or dialog-based scenarios, or the effects of information content type and presentation modality associated with driver interruptibility. The test-bed simulates situations in which our human subjects continuously engage in a dual-task paradigm that includes a primary on-going vigilance task (i.e., PT in Figure 12 left) and a set of computer-driven dialog-based interruptions as secondary HCI demands (i.e., ST and their sequence in Figure 12 left and Figure 12 right respectively). In this stage, we test the interaction between driver interruptibility and in-car HCI tasks and discuss its impacts on the driver’s attention and cognition.