Bertin Ergonomie – Human Factors is pleased to announce Mr Robin Eyraud’s thesis defence (and invites you to attend).
Robin carried out his PhD within our team over a period of three years, working directly on our Research & Development projects for the automotive sector (in the field of Advanced Driver Interactions) and in partnership with the University of Paris 8, the academic partner for this research, and under the supervision of Thierry Baccino and Elisabetta Zibetti.
Thesis topic:
Visual attention allocation whilst driving: the impact of augmented reality
Venue and time of the defence:
City of Science
Friday 23 December at 1.00 pm
Jean Painlevé Room (library, level –2)
Abstract of the thesis:
Attention is the process of filtering out information that is useful to a task from that which is not. Highlighting augmented reality (AR) guides this process of selecting information by emphasising certain elements over others. As currently envisaged for driving, highlighting AR draws attention to elements related to the general act of driving (e.g. road signs in conditions of poor visibility, the direction to take), but independently of specific manoeuvres. However, the literature on visual attention during tasks shows us that eye movements are highly specific to immediate goals and sub-goals. AR that does not respect this «natural» prioritisation of information processing therefore risks disrupting the acquisition of information.
The primary aim of this research is to determine the extent to which visual attention whilst driving is focused on information relating to the manoeuvre. The second aim is to investigate the impact of AR on this allocation of attention.
We conducted three experiments in which participants viewed static and dynamic driving scenes and had to decide whether they could perform a manoeuvre. We analysed variations in the allocation of visual attention according to the manoeuvres reported and the AR conditions using eye-tracking data. Our results show that visual attention is strongly directed towards cues that facilitate decision-making, but does not neglect cues that facilitate a general understanding of the scene. AR optimises visual attention when it highlights cues related to the manoeuvre, but it disrupts visual attention under other conditions. These results enable us to identify and characterise various risks inherent in highlight-based AR, and to discuss design approaches to address them.