Simulation of Passenger Situation for Multi-User NUI Evaluation in Autonomous Driving Simulator

Abstract

As autonomous driving technology develops, the duty of the passenger representing the existing driver to drive will disappear, resulting in a situation where one system and interface can be operated simultaneously with a number of passengers. It also means that the demand for NUI, an appropriate interface for autonomous vehicles since it is easy to learn and intuitive to use and should not increase the stress on the passengers, considering multiple users may increase. To our knowledge, there are no studies discussing the re-enactment of the passenger situation. In this study, We did a user study to validate the autonomous driving simulator and fellow passing situation simulation. Participants experience three NUI testbed platforms, A) screen-based autonomous driving simulator + actor-based fellow passenger situation simulation, B) HMD-based autonomous driving simulator + virtual avatar-based fellow passenger situation simulation, C) HMD-based autonomous driving simulator + virtual agent-based fellow passenger situation simulation, across to two interaction methods, touch interaction and mid-air gestures. The results of a user study indicate that it was effective as a simulation in all display device types and all passenger situation reproduction methods. We hope that this work will enable a virtual agent technique that allows many HVI researchers to proceed with user studies without wasting human resources to take into account a large number of passenger situations.