Where to gaze during take-over: Eye gaze strategy analysis of different situation awareness and hazard perception levels

Abstract

While autonomous vehicles are being developed for the future of surface transportation, drivers today still need to be prepared for takeover. The objective of this study is to understand the optimal gaze strategy during the take-over process. First, an affine transfer method was used to link the eye tracking coordinates and pre-defined Aera-of-Interests (AOIs) locations. Then, independent t-tests were applied to analyze the relevance between the gaze strategy determined by the gaze time percentages on various AOIs and the Situation Awareness (SA) and Hazard Perception (HP) levels. The results showed that drivers with higher SA used different gaze strategies before and after they detected the hazards, while drivers with higher HP kept focusing on the center of the road. Explanations and implications of take-over request design are discussed.