Evaluation of Human Acceptance and Comfort of Automated Highway Driving at Different Levels of Automation

Fully automated driving of road vehicles on highways consists of different vehicle control tasks that are currently evolving from research to series production. These tasks are mainly covered by the three following driving systems: Adaptive Cruise Control – ACC, Lane Keeping Assist – LKA and Lane Change Assist - LCA. Among these systems, different levels of automation are available, e.g. warning/informing, intervene on demand and also partially automated systems. This research presents the first part of a feasibility study about an intuitive switching mechanism using a Human-Machine Interface (HMI) that combines aforementioned systems in order to adjust the level of automation of SAE levels 0 to 3, (Smith 2013), according to the preferences of a human driver. Driving systems of the levels 0, 2 and 3 together with a novel HMI concept are implemented in a driving simulator and tested with respect to acceptance and comfort as well as to reliability by a sample of 20 volunteer drivers. The proof of concept of each system as well as the testing form the basis for a later implementation of the presented intuitive switching mechanism.