Marionette: Enabling On-Road Wizard-of-Oz Autonomous Driving Studies

There is a growing need to study the interactions between drivers and their increasingly autonomous vehicles. This paper describes a method of using a low-cost, portable, and versatile driver interaction system in commercial passenger vehicles to enable on-road partial and fully autonomous driving interaction studies. By conducting on-road Wizard-of-Oz studies in naturalistic settings, we can explore a range of driving conditions and scenarios far beyond what can be conducted in laboratory simulator environments. The Marionette system uses off-the-shelf components to cre- ate bidirectional communication between the driving controls of a Wizard-of-Oz vehicle operator and a driving study participant. It signals to the study participant what the car is doing and enables researchers to study participant intervention in driving activity. Mar- ionette is designed to be easily replicated for researchers studying partially autonomous driving interaction. This paper describes the design and evaluation of this system.