Towards Context-Aware Modeling of Situation Awareness in Conditionally Automated Driving

Abstract: Maintaining adequate situation awareness (SA) is crucial for the safe operation of conditionally automated vehicles (AVs), which requires drivers to regain control during takeover (TOR) events. This study developed a predictive model for real-time assessment of driver SA using multimodal data (e.g., galvanic skin response, heart rate and eye tracking data, and driver characteristics) collected in a simulated driving environment. Sixty-seven participants experienced automated driving scenarios with TORs, with conditions varying in risk perception and the presence of automation errors. A LightGBM (Light Gradient Boosting Machine) model trained on the top 12 predictors identified by SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) achieved promising performance with RMSE=0.89, MAE=0.71, and Corr=0.78. These findings have implications towards context-aware modeling of SA in conditionally automated driving, paving the way for safer and more seamless driver-AV interactions.