Augmented Reality Windshield Displays and their Potential to Enhance User Experience in Automated Driving

Increasing vehicle automation presents challenges as drivers of highly automated vehicles become more disengaged from the primary driving task. However, even with fully automated driving, there will still be activities that require interfaces for vehicle-passenger interactions. Windshield displays are a technology with a promising potential for automated driving, as they are able to provide large content areas supporting drivers in non-driving related activities. However, it is still unknown how potential drivers or passengers would use these displays. This work addresses user preferences for windshield displays in automated driving. Participants of a user study ( N = 63N=63) were presented two levels of automation (conditional and full), and could freely choose preferred positions, content types, as well as size, transparency levels and importance levels of content windows using a simulated "ideal" windshield display. We visualized the results in form of heatmap data which show that user preferences differ with respect to the level of automation, age, gender, or environment aspects. These insights can help designers of interiors and in-vehicle applications to provide a rich user experience in highly automated vehicles.