A Driving Simulator Study Exploring the Effect of Different Mental Models on ADAS System Effectiveness

This work investigated the effect of mental models on the effectiveness of an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). The system tested was a lateral control ADAS, which informed the drivers whether the vehicle was correctly positioned inside the lane or not, with the use of two visual and one auditory stimuli. Three driving simulator experiments were performed, involving three separate groups of subjects, who received different initial exposures to the technology. In Experiment 0 subjects were not exposed to ADAS in order to be able to indicate that no effect of learning affected the results. In Experiment A subjects were not instructed on the ADAS functionalities and they had to learn on their own; in Experiment B they were directly instructed on the functionalities by reading an information booklet. In all experiments drivers performed multiple driving sessions. The mean absolute lateral position (LP) and standard deviation of lateral position (SDLP) for each driver were considered as main dependent variables to measure the effectiveness of the ADAS. Findings from this work showed that the initial mental model had an impact on ADAS effectiveness, since it produced significantly different results in terms of ADAS effectiveness, with those reading the information booklet being able to improve more and faster their lateral control.