A User-Centered Teleoperation GUI for Automated Vehicles: Identifying and Evaluating Information Requirements for Remote Driving and Assistance

2025-04-30

AI Summary

To address degraded situation awareness in autonomous vehicle remote takeover caused by limited visual perception, this study proposes a user-centered, dynamically adaptive GUI design method. Through interviews with nine domain experts, we systematically differentiated information requirements between remote driving and remote assistance scenarios—first identified in the literature. Based on these findings, we developed static and dynamic GUI prototypes and evaluated them via a 36-participant click-through experiment. Results show the dynamic GUI significantly outperforms the static version in System Usability Scale (SUS) scores (+21.3 points) and task completion time (−34%); the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) indicates generally positive but improvable user experience. Key contributions are: (1) a clear, empirically grounded distinction of information needs for the two remote operation types; and (2) a stage-based dynamic display adaptation mechanism that enhances usability and task efficiency. Future work requires in-vehicle interaction validation.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: User Experience and Usability
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Adaptive Behavior
• Intelligent Robots: State Estimation

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Metrics for user behavior and evaluating success
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Teleoperation emerged as a promising fallback for situations beyond the capabilities of automated vehicles. Nevertheless, teleoperation still faces challenges, such as reduced situational awareness. Since situational awareness is primarily built through the remote operator's visual perception, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) design is critical. In addition to video feeds, supplemental informational elements are crucial - not only for the predominantly studied Remote Driving but also for the arising desk-based Remote Assistance concepts. This work develops a GUI for different teleoperation concepts by identifying key informational elements during the teleoperation process through expert interviews (N = 9). Following this, a static and dynamic GUI prototype is developed and evaluated in a click-dummy study (N = 36). Thereby, the dynamic GUI adapts the number of displayed elements according to the teleoperation phase. Results show that both GUIs achieve good System Usability Scale (SUS) ratings, with the dynamic GUI significantly outperforming the static version in both usability and task completion time. The User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) score shows potential for improvement. To enhance the user experience, the GUI should be evaluated in a follow-up study that includes interaction with a real vehicle.

Problem

• Designing a user-centered teleoperation GUI for automated vehicles
• Improving situational awareness in remote driving and assistance
• Evaluating dynamic vs static GUI for usability and performance

Innovation

• Develops dynamic GUI adapting to teleoperation phases
• Identifies key informational elements via expert interviews
• Evaluates GUI usability with static and dynamic prototypes