Retrieving Human Control After Situations of Automated Driving: How to Measure Situation Awareness

Abstract

When applying automated driving as a means for congestion assistance, developers need to account for regular and sudden transitions between automation and manual control. To assess then the ability to retrieve human control, we tested within a driver simulator experiment how Situation Awareness (SA) gained during time-critical take-overs, and based on a simulation freeze technique (SAGAT) and SA queries (SART), could be measured. The results show that drivers are able to build up SA in these time-critical situations. With regard to measurement method, only SART showed positive correlation with successfulness in retrieving control. Nonetheless, the applied measurement method showed to allow future selection of support types drivers are in need for when retrieving control after automation.