Augmented Reality Displays for Communicating Uncertainty Information in Automated Driving

Safe manual driving performance following takeovers in conditionally automated driving systems is impeded by a lack in situation awareness, partly due to an inappropriate trust in the system's capabilities. Previous work has indicated that the communication of system uncertainties can aid the trust calibration process. However, it has yet to be investigated how the information is best conveyed to the human operator. The study outlined in this publication presents an interface layout to visualise function-specific uncertainty information in an augmented reality display and explores the suitability of 11 visual variables. 46 participants completed a sorting task and indicated their preference for each of these variables. The results demonstrate that particularly colour-based and animation-based variables, above all hue, convey a clear order in terms of urgency and are well-received by participants. The presented findings have implications for all augmented reality displays that are intended to show content varying in urgency.