Glasgow trial explores AR cues for autonomous road safety

As self-driving cars rapidly improve, a future where driver attention is diverted to other tasks is considered somewhat inevitable, albeit potentially dangerous. Augmented reality in the form of heads up displays (HUDs) could allow drivers to maintain a safer level of supervisory attention on the road while still engaging with non-driving tasks.

“What we wanted to do with this study was explore whether attention-grabbing augmented reality systems could allow people to perform non-driving tasks but quickly switch focus at critical moments,” said study co-author Thomas Goodge, from the University’s School of Computing Science.

According to Goodge, the current state of autonomous driving places those at the wheel somewhere between drivers and passengers, whereby they are not continuously involved in steering but are still required to respond to safety hazards. This, he said, creates issues. 

“One big problem with that is that humans don’t deal very well with sustained supervisory tasks,” said Goodge. “They get bored, they get distracted, and when they do they lose their awareness of the road. That could be dangerous if they react too slowly to a sudden change of the road conditions around them.”