Analyze Drivers' Intervention Behavior During Autonomous Driving -- A VR-incorporated Approach

Given the rapid advance in ITS technologies, future mobility is pointing to vehicular autonomy. However, there is still a long way before full automation, and human intervention is required. This work sheds light on understanding human drivers' intervention behavior involved in the operation of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and utilizes this knowledge to improve the perception of critical driving scenarios. Experiment environments were implemented where the virtual reality (VR) and traffic micro-simulation are integrated, and tests were carried out under typical and diverse traffic scenes. Performance indicators such as the probability of intervention, accident rates are defined and used to quantify and compare the risk levels. By offering novel insights into drivers' intervention behavior, this work will help improve the performances of the automated control under similar scenarios. Furthermore, such an integrated and immersive tool for autonomous driving studies will be valuable for research on human-to-automation trust. To the best knowledge of the authors, this work is among the pioneer works making efforts into such types of tools.