Experimental Study on Different HMI Design Options for Lateral Safe Applications

LATERAL SAFE is a subproject of the PREVENT Integrated Project cofunded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme. LATERAL SAFE introduces a cluster of safety applications of the future vehicles in order to prevent lateral/rear related accidents and assist the driver in adverse or low visibility conditions and blind spot areas. LATERAL SAFE applications include a lateral and rear monitoring system (LRM), a lane change assistance (LCA) and a lateral collision warning (LCW). An effective Human Machine Interface (HMI) is foreseen in each case to support these applications. For this reason, pilots have been organised in three sites (one in Greece and two in Sweden) to evaluate alternative HMI mock-ups towards the determination of the most adequate one for each LATERAL SAFE application. The Greek HMI Pilots were conducted at a semi-dynamic driving simulator and targeted at the evaluation of the HMI for the LCA and the LCW applications. A mixed factorial design 3x3 of within and between subjects was used and all subjects run a set of 5 traffic scenarios, firstly without receiving any warning, and then another set of 5 traffic situations, by receiving a particular type of warning(s) depending on the experimental condition. In this paper, the experimental plan designed for the Greek HMI Pilots, the specific HMI alternatives evaluated as well as the main results arisen will be presented.