Investigating the effects of augmented reality cues during non-driving related tasks on the situational awareness of drivers

Goodge, Thomas Alexander (2025) Investigating the effects of augmented reality cues during non-driving related tasks on the situational awareness of drivers. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

As automated vehicles become responsible for more of the driving task, the way in which drivers need to process the road will change. This will free up capacity to engage with non-driving related tasks, activities which are unrelated to operation of the vehicle or attending to the road. However, the current state of automation still requires a driver to be ready to resume control of the vehicle at all times. This thesis evaluates the effects of using augmented reality for presenting these non-driving tasks to drivers of automated vehicles. In particular, the ability of drivers to react to a hazard and predict what happens next in a road scene, a key component of situational awareness, were measured while they were performing a non-driving related task presented in augmented reality. Six experiments, using a mix of validated empirical tests of situational awareness, expert focus groups and eye tracking measures, were designed and conducted to assess the impact of engaging with a distracting non-driving task while attempting to maintain attention on the road. Results showed that, contrary to prior recommendations, a heads-up display presentation of a non-driving task at eye level does not convey the same benefits found when displaying non-driving related information. Evidence of intentional blindness was found when evaluating the use of attentional cues within a dynamic augmented reality display. This demonstrated that using eyes-on-road as a measure of attention is not wholly appropriate when investigating how an augmented reality interface overlaid onto the real-world impacts driver attention. Further exploration into how to design efficacious attentional cues highlights how the inclusion of salient attention capturing elements in a positional cue can enhance driver awareness of the road when they are distracted by an NDRT. Additionally, it was shown that drivers were able to utilise social cues from a virtual agent highlighting the position of a hazard, indicating the potential application of this modality for enhancing situational awareness through in-vehicle virtual assistants. This thesis contributes to the field by providing evidence of the impact of presenting an NDRT via AR on driving performance measures and methods in which this can be overcome with attentional cues. Overall, the findings in this thesis have significant implications for the applied transport psychology and automotive user interfaces domains.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology; Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science; R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Funder's Name: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
• Supervisor's Name: Brewster, Professor Stephen and Pollick, Professor Frank
• Date of Award: 2025
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2025-84942
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 03 Mar 2025 14:10
• Last Modified: 03 Mar 2025 14:15
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.84942
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/84942

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