Investigating the Effect of Different Autonomy Levels on User Acceptance and User Experience in Self-driving Cars with a VR Driving Simulator

Abstract

The possible transition to fully autonomous cars represents a paradigm shift, which is likely to have a profound impact on driving experience and automobile technology acceptance. Using an online questionnaire, Rödel et al. [7] have found that measures for User Acceptance (UA) and User Experience (UX) decline with increasing autonomy level. In this study, we investigate the differences in UA and UX for vehicles with different levels of automation in a more immersive context. We used a simple driving simulator setup in a virtual reality environment (using an Oculus Rift headset). We designed three tasks which each represented a different level of automation and asked participants (N = 17) to fill out the Car Technology Acceptance Model (CTAM) questionnaire after using each autonomy level. The immersion of the simulator setup was assessed with a standardized questionnaire. In contrast to Rödel et al. [7] results do not show a general decline in UA and UX with increasing autonomy, but suggest that Performance Expectancy, Perceived Safety and Social Influence are significantly higher for the fully automated condition than for no automation. The scores for immersion ranging about the average of benchmark evaluations indicate that the users felt quite immersed, but that there is still room for improving the VR setup.