Investigating the Design of Information Presentation in Take-Over Requests in Automated Vehicles

In (partially) automated vehicles, users will sometimes have to take over control due to system failure or reach of an operational driving domain end. In such scenarios, the user becomes the driver and has to quickly gain situational awareness. With advanced sensory, an automated vehicle could aid the user in building situational awareness by providing information. A literature analysis found no commonly conveyed information. Therefore, to evaluate the effects of four different abstraction levels (high, medium-high, medium, and low) and used modalities (visual vs. visual+auditory) on situational awareness and accompanying usability scores, we evaluated eight systems and a baseline without information display. In the between-subjects online monitor-based study (N=225), we found that while subjective measures are higher and a warning is required, providing abstract information does not improve objective situational awareness, and only being provided with visual information was preferred.