The goal of my master thesis was to find out if an head-up display could be used to offer secundary tasks (such as reading a book, or sending a text message) during automated driving. The current self-driving cars are not yet advanced enough to be able to deal with every possible situation. On moments where the self-driving system is not able to react upon the road situation, the driver is expected to take over. In order to do this effectively the driver is required to constantly pay attention, which tends bo be very tiring and boring. This in turn might lead the driver to seek out distractions (secundary tasks). Instead of keeping these secundary tasks from the driver, it might be interesting to look at a way to offer these tasks in such a way, that the driver is still able to take over effectively.
This was done via a Head-up display, where a screen is places horizontally in the dashboard of the vehicle, so that the interface is reflected of the front window of the car so that it seems as if it is projected in front of the vehicle. The driver could execute their secundary tasks and monitor the driving situation simultaniously. If the car would detect a pottentially dangerous situation (such as an intersection) it would ask for the driver's attention via a visual and auditory signal, while making the secundary task less visible. The driver will recieve a second signal if he needs to take back control of the car. If the car is unable to detect a dangerous situation, then the driver would still know enough about the driving situation to take over successfully.
The layout and the functionalities of the display were decided upon, based on usability tests. Where respondents were placed in a driving situator and asked to read a text off of a head-up display, while the car was driving through a simulated environment. Afterwards the drivers were asked what they were able to recall from their environment, to find out how aware they were about their environment. A similair second test was executed, where the respondents were also expected to take back controll over the car when something (potentionally) dangerous happened on the road.
