There are a lot of health, safety and productivity
benefits that we can potentially capture with
autonomous vehicles, however, we are afraid
to take our hands off the wheel -
we don't want to give up control of this.
I'm a second-year masters student at the University
of Michigan School of Information and I'm
a research assistant on a project where we're
examining trust in autonomous vehicles.
We're here at the UMTRI driving simulator.
The setup here is a Nissan Versa sedan.
The vehicle is also in simulation capable
of using an automated driving mode.
When the user does engage that mode the steering
wheel moves entirely under control of the
vehicle - the brake function, the acceleration
is all controlled by the automated system
in the simulation as well.
People are going to have to, you know, to
put it no other way they are going to have
to trust their lives to these systems.
We're looking at how that automated system
is conveying information to drivers and we're
looking at which conditions can lead to the
greatest amount of trust, and lead to trust
building of automated vehicles.
[Professor Robert] As human beings, when we
trust something trust is built on expectations.
When people go and violate our expectations
we don't trust them anymore -
and it's the same thing with technology.
My and my colleagues conducted a study where
we supplemented the drivers - what we refer
to as situational awareness.
So in this study, what we did was we had conditions
that could inform the driver at any time the
current status of the driving situation.
[Simulation] "Stopped vehicle ahead, take control
now."
And the idea behind it was that if the driver
trusted the vehicle and felt the vehicle would
give them information on how things are going,
and in particular information that will lead
them to know if they have to take over the
vehicle any time soon, or not - then they
could focus on another task.
So our results so far is that a vehicle that
supports the driver's situational awareness
does lead to higher trust
and that trust
leads to better performance on the secondary task.
Driving has always been about independence.
It's a sign that you are taking control of
your life, right - you become the master of
your own destiny.
Now all of a sudden, we're asking people to
turn that over to the vehicle.
So there's not just an issue of how reliable
a technology is, there is some psychology.
