The influence of time-criticality on Situation Awareness when retrieving human control after automated driving

When applying automated driving as a means for congestion assistance, developers are challenged how to accommodate the transitions between automated and manually driving, especially because these transitions might occur regularly and suddenly. During automated driving, the ability to take over control is also aggravated due to the driver being placed out of the control-loop. To assess then the ability to retrieve human control, we tested within a driver simulator experiment the influence of criticality (available time) on Situation Awareness (SA) gained during time-critical take-overs within a scenario of congested driving. Though one of the applied measurement methods did not show the expected effect of SA on successfulness of taking back control, the results show that drivers are able to successfully retrieve control, also within time-critical situations. Furthermore, the results show that the ability to retrieve control is positively influenced if drivers gain increased levels of SA.