Marionette: Enabling On-Road Wizard-of-Oz Autonomous Driving Studies

There is a growing need to study the interactions between drivers and their increasingly autonomous vehicles. This paper describes a method of using a low-cost, portable, and versatile driver interaction system in commercial passenger vehicles to enable on-road partial and fully autonomous driving interaction studies. By conducting on-road Wizard-of-Oz studies in naturalistic settings, we can explore a range of driving conditions and scenarios far beyond what can be conducted in laboratory simulator environments. The Marionette system uses off-the-shelf components to create bidirectional communication between the driving controls of a Wizard-of-Oz vehicle operator and a driving study participant. It signals to the study participant what the car is doing and enables researchers to study participant intervention in driving activity. Marionette is designed to be easily replicated for researchers studying partially autonomous driving interaction. This paper describes the design and evaluation of this system.