How to build trust in vehicles via sound

Summary

Our Intention

We wanted to explore whether dedicated audio feedback can increase trust in autonomous vehicles. To do this, we developed a sound concept called Autonomous Vehicle Assurance (AVA), which predicts upcoming driving maneuvers and makes them audible in a spatial way. We then tested the system in a virtual driving scenario with 42 participants.

What we found

Compared with standard electric motor sounds, AVA was perceived by many participants as intuitive and easy to understand. It helped them focus more effectively on secondary tasks, because they felt less need to constantly monitor whether the vehicle was behaving correctly. As a result, overall trust in the vehicle increased. Task performance also improved significantly: participants using AVA performed considerably better on concurrent tasks during the autonomous ride.

Outlook

Spatial, anticipatory sonification has strong potential as an intuitive and effective HMI element for autonomous vehicles and should be considered in the design of future interfaces. The findings suggest that systems like AVA can make it much easier for people in autonomous vehicles to engage in other activities during the ride, such as reading or writing emails.

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