"Gap after the next two vehicles": A Spatio-temporally Situated Dialog for a Cooperative Driving Assistant

We present a spatio-temporally situated dialog that is implemented in a driver assistance system. The system supports the driver in turning left at a busy urban intersection by providing verbal information on the vehicles arriving from the right. This is a highly dynamic scenario, as the location of the vehicles significantly changes while the system is referring to them. Consequently, the time the system needs for producing the utterances and the time drivers need to comprehend them and prepare their action has to be taken into account in the dialog management. We introduce a dialog concept, which predicts the future traffic participants state and plans the utterances such that they align with the driver's expectations. We have implemented and evaluated this system in a prototype vehicle.