Demonstration of a low-cost hyper-realistic testbed for designing future onboard experiences

Abstract

This demo presents DriverSense, a novel experimental platform for designing and validating onboard user interfaces for self-driving and remotely controlled vehicles. Most of currently existing vehicular testbeds and simulators are designed to reproduce with high fidelity the ergonomic aspects associated with the driving experience. However, with increasing deployment of self-driving and remotely controlled or monitored vehicles, it is expected that the digital components of the driving experience will become more relevant. That is because users will be less engaged in the actual driving tasks and more involved with oversight activities. In this respect, high visual testbed fidelity becomes an important pre-requisite for supporting the design and evaluation of future interfaces. DriverSense, which is based on the hyper-realistic video game GTA V, has been developed to satisfy this need. To showcase its experimental flexibility, a set of self-driving interfaces have been implemented, including Heads-Up Display (HUDs), Augmented Reality (ARs) and directional audio.