From Awareness to Intent: Mitigating Silent Driving System Failures through Prospective Situation Awareness Enhancing Interfaces

2026-04-20

AI Summary

This study addresses safety risks arising from silent system failures in partial driving automation by proposing a prospective situation awareness–enhancing interface based on augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD). Through a driving simulator experiment integrating multimodal data—behavioral, subjective, and physiological—the research elucidates the mediating role of situation awareness between interface intervention and takeover performance, while distinguishing the differential mechanisms by which perceptual cues and system intention communication enhance situation awareness and trust, respectively. Results demonstrate that the proposed interface significantly improves driver takeover performance: perceptual cues are most effective in boosting situation awareness, whereas conveying system intentions more effectively fosters trust. Furthermore, a potential association between neural activity and situation awareness is identified.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

Silent automation failures, where a system fails to detect a hazard without warning, pose a critical safety challenge for partially automated vehicles. While research has mostly focused on takeover requests, how to support a driver in silent failure remains underexplored. We conducted a multi-modal driving simulator study with 48 participants to investigate how different Prospective Situation Awareness Enhancement (PSAE) interfaces, delivered via augmented reality head-up display, affect takeover performance. By integrating behavioral, subjective psychological, and physiological data, our analysis suggests that situational awareness (SA) serves as an important moderating factor through which PSAE interfaces improve takeover performance. Further, we found that providing perceptual cues was most effective in enhancing SA, while communicating system intent was superior for building trust. Finally, we identified a potential correlate of SA in the neuroactivity. Overall, this paper contributes to understanding how transparency-oriented interfaces may support drivers and provides design insights into HMI design for silent failures.

Problem

• silent automation failures
• situational awareness
• takeover performance
• partially automated vehicles
• human-machine interface

Innovation

• Prospective Situation Awareness Enhancement
• silent automation failure
• takeover performance
• augmented reality HUD
• neuroactivity correlate