Computational Physiology Lab

ᴀᴄᴄᴇʟᴀʀᴏᴜꜱᴀʟ － ᴀ ꜱᴛʀᴇꜱꜱᴏʀ ʜɪᴅᴅᴇɴ ɪɴ ᴘʟᴀɪɴ ꜱɪɢʜᴛ

We have just published the results of our naturalistic study in the CHI Proceedings. Take the simplest possible drive, with little traffic and in perfect weather, and you might think that this would be a piece of cake for everyone. The study suggests that for half the people things are different, as they manifest nearly 50% stronger arousal responses (i.e., ) in commonplace events. This is after removing all confounding factors and for events as simple as starting after a red light! Furthermore, psychometric measurements confirmed that the `accelaroused' group of drivers felt more loaded than the alternative group, upon completion of the same driving tasks. This is a stunning finding and calls for further on larger scale studies. Our technological civilization has introduced a host of stressors that we slowly begin to understand. This is one more in the list. It may have long term implications for delivery drivers who experience frequent stop and go patterns throughout the day. It may also affect machine-to-human handover algorithms in future semi-automated vehicles.

Access the paper at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411763.3451809