Understanding Driver-Automated Vehicle Interactions Through Wizard of Oz Design Improvisation

This paper describes a Wizard of Oz study that was performed to gather insights on how automated vehicles (NHTSA’s Levels of Automation 2 and 3) should interact with human drivers. Twelve design improvisation sessions were conducted inside a driving simulator with interaction and interface design experts. The participants drove through a simulated course with various terrain and road conditions, while the two human operators (wizards) controlled the audio and driving behavior of the car. Through the feedback collected in these sessions, insights in five areas were discovered: drivers’ desire for shared control, transitions in driving mode, response latency, addressing requests, and drivers’ trust in the car. Additional examining yielded potential concepts and ideas that may be implemented and tested in future work.