The Future & Autonomous Cars

A car is driving down the road, surrounded by green hills, blue skies and rolling fields. As it approaches a line of cars on the side of the road, another car suddenly pulls out and almost sideswipes the first car. The driver’s heart pounds with beads of sweat on the forehead and neck and tense shoulders. Before her foot can instinctively press the brake pedal, the car glides to a stop. This is the experience that the Applied Psychophysiology and Performance Creative Inquiry team re-creates as they study the effects of autonomous vehicles on drivers. The team uses the front half of a car designed to simulate a vehicle that can start, stop and navigate itself. The simulator is surrounded by screens that show a realistic environment in order to give participants the feeling that they are in a moving car. With companies like Tesla releasing new autonomous vehicles every year, studying the stress and mistrust related to driving these vehicles could inform companies and customers if autonomous cars are for everyone.

Before allowing a participant to experience the simulated drive, the team gives the participant a questionnaire about his or her normal driving habits. Then, the participant test-drives the simulated car while the team observes how he or she handles the car. When the participant begins the autonomous drive, the screens surrounding the simulator show either a safe or a risky track. The risky track could include a sideswipe, blind turn or a car pulling out in front of the participant. When faced with these dangers, most participants showed physiological signs of stress, including increased heart rate, sweat and tension in the trapezius muscle. After the simulated drive, each participant filled out another questionnaire detailing their trust, or lack of trust, in the autonomous car.

The students on the Applied Psychophysiology and Performance team tackle a wide range of work in order to conduct their trials. They create the environment that appears on the screens, including pedestrians, landscapes and other cars. They also learn about the physiology of the body in order to record and understand the signs of stress and observe and record the results. According to Drew Morris, Department of Psychology, the students adapt their knowledge base to fit the demands of the project. “They are going into something that they have never seen or worked with and troubleshooting. They had to get comfortable with how the human body works and how they interact with technology,” Morris said.

The students’ statistical analysis of questionnaire and physiological data supports the team’s hypothesis that the risky track produces more stress than the safe track. The data also indicates that participants exhibited signs of stress simply by being in an autonomous vehicle. The team intends to broaden its research on autonomous vehicles, possibly by including elderly participants or a nighttime track in order to explore other aspects of the vehicles’ effects on drivers. Small but significant amounts of stress caused by being in an autonomous vehicle could cause health problems in people who are elderly, recovering from surgery or who have heart problems or hypertension. By better understanding the physiological effects of autonomous vehicles, the team hopes that doctors will be able to use their data to make recommendations for these populations.