Introduction Matters: Manipulating Trust in Automation and Reliance in Automated Driving

Abstract

Trust in automation is a key determinant for the adoption of automated systems and their appropriate use. Therefore, it constitutes an essential research area for the introduction of automated vehicles to road traffic. In this study, we investigated the influence of trust promoting (Trust promoted group) and trust lowering (Trust lowered group) introductory information on reported trust, reliance behavior and take-over performance. Forty participants encountered three situations in a 17-minute highway drive in a conditionally automated vehicle (SAE Level 3). Situation 1 and Situation 3 were non-critical situations where a take-over was optional. Situation 2 represented a critical situation where a take-over was necessary to avoid a collision. A non-driving-related task (NDRT) was presented between the situations to record the allocation of visual attention. Participants reporting a higher trust level spent less time looking at the road or instrument cluster and more time looking at the NDRT. The manipulation of introductory information resulted in medium differences in reported trust and influenced participants’ reliance behavior. Participants of the Trust promoted group looked less at the road or instrument cluster and more at the NDRT. The odds of participants of the Trust promoted group to overrule the automated driving system in the non-critical situations were 3.65 times (Situation 1) to 5 times (Situation 3) higher. In Situation 2, the Trust promoted group’s mean take-over time was extended by 1154 ms and the mean minimum time-to-collision was 933 ms shorter. Six participants from the Trust promoted group compared to no participant of the Trust lowered group collided with the obstacle. The results demonstrate that the individual trust level influences how much drivers monitor the environment while performing an NDRT. Introductory information influences this trust level, reliance on an automated driving system, and if a critical take-over situation can be successfully solved.

Automation transparency: implications of uncertainty communication for human-automation interaction and interfaces

“…Participants were briefed about the experiment using a pre-recorded video and were subsequently asked to fill in a consent form and a demographic survey. Throughout the experiment, all instructions were presented in a consistent manner to prevent effects of differing introductions on dependent variables such as trust (Körber, Baseler, & Bengler, 2018). As part of the introduction, participants were made aware of the fallibility of automated driving systems and the specific consequences of system failures, particularly TORs.…”

A Case Study of Trust on Autonomous Driving

“…Autonomous vehicles have achieved a high level of autonomy with the development of various sensors and advanced driver assistance systems. Although autonomous driving requires less human involvement in the vehicle operation, the trust level can affect humans' interaction with the vehicle and decide humans' reliance on vehicle usage [1], [2]. Human operators tend to use the automation they trust and reject it when they do not [3].…”

“…The existing studies mostly use post-experiment surveys or *This research was supported in part by NSF grant CNS-1755784 and Toyota Motor North America "Digital Twins" project. 1 questionnaires to evaluate trust level [8]- [10]. However, such methods cannot capture the dynamic change of trust level in real-time [11], [12], which is important for autonomous driving (e.g., to decide timely driver intervention actions).…”

Trust in an Autonomously Driven Simulator and Vehicle Performing Maneuvers at a T-Junction with and Without Other Vehicles

“…Some recent studies have considered human trust when testing mainly Level 3 AV technology in the laboratory [3,4,24]and on the road [25]. [3] conducted a simulator study in AV mode with a maximum speed of 20-mph and measured trust and comfort when passing other objects including bicycles and scooters.…”

“…A recent study by [24], again using a handover paradigm but with non-critical as well as critical takeover situations, investigated the impact of introductory instructions designed to increase ('trust promoted') or decrease ('trust lowered') on reliance of and trust in Level 3 vehicle autonomy. They found higher ratings of trust with experience although only moderate differences due to the manipulation of introductory information.…”