Teleoperated Driving, a Key Technology for Automated Driving? Comparison of Actual Test Drives with a Head Mounted Display and Conventional Monitors

While all over the world an increasing number of automotive companies, universities and startups are pushing the development of highly automated cars, safety concerns and government regulations still remain a topic of discussion. The technology of teleoperated driving could not only solve many future problems lying ahead, but even enable automated driving as a whole. In this paper we present an actual driving study we conducted the last year, in which we analyze the effect of an head-mounted-display on the situation awareness and telepresence of the remote driver during teleoperation in narrow city scenarios. The user trial focuses on the benefits of a head-mounted display compared to conventional computer screens for visualizing the camera and sensor data. The results indicate that state of the art head-mounted displays allow a higher feeling of immersion, but do not necessarily improve the driving performance of the operator and controllability of the vehicle since collisions with test objects still occur. Furthermore, the design of the test scenarios can be used for testing future systems for vehicle teleoperation. (Abstract)