The collaboration entitled “The Human Factor in Driving Simulation” with VI-Grade company focused on innovation in the automotive sector, specifically the testing of advanced autonomous vehicle simulators. Indeed, Virtual Reality simulators are employed in professional settings and research to validate training programs (e.g., medical training for residents, learning safety procedures in case of accidents) and/or analyze, for instance, in laboratory experiments, participants’ skills and perceptions and/or evaluate the difficulty of specific tasks, to inform the design of new control interfaces. For the present collaboration, it was relevant to study methods to support pilots during driving to avoid hazardous situations. A significant aspect of this collaboration was the transfer of knowledge from the academic environment to the practical application context of the company.
Certain members of HTLab interacted respectively with a research unit of the Department of Information Engineering (DEI; University of Padova) and a team from VI-Grade during the project. The corporate partner, founded in 2005, offers innovative solutions to streamline the development process, from prototype conceptualization to validation, considering technologies relevant mainly to the transportation industry, including the automotive, aerospace, motorcycle, and railway sectors.

In the context of the collaboration with VI-Grade, experiments were conducted with specific experimental paradigms, considering both self-report tools (e.g., questionnaires) aimed at evaluating the level of immersion, mental workload, user experience, and usability of the driving simulator, and the difficulty/danger of obstacles in the virtual environment and driving ability. Besides, psychophysiological indices were monitored to detect the level of mental and physical stress during the driving simulator experiments. Parameters related to cardiac activity, eye behavior, and electrodermal activity were considered, which are useful for assessing the level of potential mental overload and stress associated with variations in task difficulty that the drivers had to face in the experiments.

Reference:

Affani, A., Zontone, P., Fenici, R., Brisinda, D., Bacchin, D., Gamberini, L., Pluchino, P., Bruschetta, M., Savorgnan, C., Formaggia, F., Minen, M., & Minen, D. (2020). Assisted/autonomous vs. human driving assessment on the DiM driving simulator using objective/subjective characterization. In 10th International Munich Chassis Symposium 2019: chassis. tech plus (pp. 307-321). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

Bacchin, D., Pluchino, P., Furlan, M., Minen, M., Minen, D., Formaggia, F., Bruschetta, M., Beghi, A. & GAMBERINI, L. (2020). Subjective evaluation of autonomous and manual driving in advanced simulation. Annual Review of Cybertheraphy and Telemedicine 2020, 81