Lewis L. Chuang

• Dr. rer. nat.
• Professor at Chemnitz University of Technology

Take-over situations in highly automated driving occur when drivers have to take over vehicle control due to automation shortcomings. Due to high visual processing demand of the driving task and time limitation of a take-over maneuver, appropriate user interface designs for take-over requests (TOR) are needed. In this paper, we propose applying amb...

The availability of additional force cues in haptic devices are often expected to improve control performance, over conditions that only provide visual feedback. However, there is little empirical evidence to show this to be true for the teleoperation control of remote vehicles (i.e., multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)). In this paper, we sho...

The current study investigates the demands that steering places on mental resources. Instead of a conventional dual-task paradigm, participants of this study were only required to perform a steering task while task-irrelevant auditory distractor probes (environmental sounds and beep tones) were intermittently presented. The event-related potentials...

A control schema for a human-machine system allows the human operator to be integrated as a mathematical description in a closed-loop control system, i.e., a pilot in an aircraft. Such an approach typically assumes that error feedback is perfectly communicated to the pilot who is responsible for tracking a single flight variable. However, this is u...

Video-based gaze-tracking systems are typically restricted in terms of their effective tracking space. This constraint limits the use of eyetrackers in studying mobile human behavior. Here, we compare two possible approaches for estimating the gaze of participants who are free to walk in a large space whilst looking at different regions of a large...

Training costs for operators of robotic arms in forestry and construction are high. A systematic analysis of skill development can help to make training more efficient. This research focuses on motor skill development by investigating the bimanual control of a four-DoF robotic arm. The two-time scale power law of learning was used to identify diffi...

With increasing automation, drivers' role progressively transitions from active operators to passive system supervisors, affecting their behaviour and cognitive processes. This study aims to understand better attention allocation and perceived cognitive load in manual, L2, and L3 driving in a realistic environment. We conducted a test-track experim...

Adaptive visualization and interfaces pervade our everyday tasks to improve interaction from the point of view of user performance and experience. This approach allows using several user inputs, whether physiological , behavioral, qualitative, or multimodal combinations , to enhance the interaction. Due to the multitude of approaches, we outline th...

Drivers of L3 automated vehicles (AVs) are not required to continuously monitor the AV system. However, they must be prepared to take over when requested. Therefore, it is necessary to design an in-vehicle environment that allows drivers to adapt their levels of preparedness to the likelihood of control transition. This study evaluates ambient in-v...

Drivers of L3 automated vehicles (AVs) are not required to continuously monitor the AV system. However, they must be prepared to take over when requested. Therefore, it is necessary to design an in-vehicle environment that allows drivers to adapt their levels of preparedness to the likelihood of control transition. This study evaluates ambient in-v...

There is a growing need for sparse representational formats of human affective states that can be utilized in scenarios with limited computational memory resources. We explore whether representing neural data, in response to emotional stimuli, in a latent vector space can serve to both predict emotional states as well as generate synthetic EEG data...

The technological properties of a system delivering simulation experience are a cru- cial dimension of immersion. To create a sense of presence and reproduce drivers behaviour as realistically as possible, we need reliable driving simulators that allow drivers to become highly immersed. This study investigates the impact of a system immersion of a...

Blinking is a natural user-induced response which paces visual information processing. This study investigates whether blinks are viable for segmenting continuous electroencephalography (EEG) activity, for inferring cognitive demands in ecologically valid work environments. We report the blink-related EEG measures of participants who performed audi...

In medicine, patients can obtain real benefits from a sham treatment. These benefits are known as the placebo effect. We report two experiments (Experiment I: N=369; Experiment II: N=100) demonstrating a placebo effect in adaptive interfaces. Participants were asked to solve word puzzles while being supported by no system or an adaptive AI interfac...

Fatalities with semi-automated vehicles typically occur when users are engaged in non-driving related tasks (NDRTs) that compromise their situational awareness (SA). This work developed a tactile display for on-body notification to support situational awareness, thus enabling users to recognize vehicle automation failures and intervene if necessary...

Virtual reality is increasingly used for tasks such as work and education. Thus, rendering scenarios that do not interfere with such goals and deplete user experience are becoming progressively more relevant. We present a physiologically adaptive system that optimizes the virtual environment based on physiological arousal, i.e., electrodermal activ...

Augmented Reality (AR) embeds virtual content in physical spaces, including virtual agents that are known to exert a social presence on users. Existing design guidelines for AR rarely consider the social implications of an agent's personal space (PS) and that it can impact user behavior and arousal. We report an experiment (N=54) where participants...

Consumer neurotechnology is arriving en masse, even while algorithms for user state estimation are being actively defined and developed. Indeed, many consumable wearables are now available that try to estimate cognitive changes from wrist data or body movement. But does this data help people? It's a critical time to ask how users could be informed...

In medicine, patients can obtain real benefits from a sham treatment. These benefits are known as the placebo effect. We report two experiments (Experiment I: N=369; Experiment II: N=100) demonstrating a placebo effect in adaptive interfaces. Participants were asked to solve word puzzles while being supported by no system or an adaptive AI interfac...

The cognitive demands of natural behavior in ecologically valid environments are difficult to grasp with neurocognitive methods. While mobile amplifiers may allow EEG to be robustly measured outside controlled laboratory settings, it remains a challenge to extract meaningful event-related EEG activity, which is commonly used to index cognitive dema...

Manual control of robotic arms is challenging and productive operators require extensive prior training. Effective training should systematically vary the difficulty level of the robot arm motions. This study investigates the extent to which Fitts’ law could define movement difficulty for bimanual controlled movements of robotic arms. Inspired by f...

In this paper, we present a review of how the various aspects of any study using an eye tracker (such as the instrument, methodology, environment, participant, etc.) affect the quality of the recorded eye-tracking data and the obtained eye-movement and gaze measures. We take this review to represent the empirical foundation for reporting guidelines...

This study evaluates changes in the relative frontal midline theta and the relative parietal midline alpha power during repeated take-over requests while driving in a highly automated vehicle.

A lot of academic and industrial HCI work has focused on making interactions easier and less effortful. As the potential risks of optimising for effortlessness have crystallised in systems designed to take advantage of the way human attention and cognition works, academic researchers and industrial practitioners have wondered whether increasing the...

Our work for the first time evaluates the effectiveness of visual and acoustic warning systems in an accident situation using a realistic, immersive driving simulation. In a first experiment, 70 participants were trained to complete a course at high speed. The course contained several forks where a wrong turn would lead to the car falling off a cli...

The Interactions website (interactions.acm.org) hosts a stable of bloggers who share insights and observations on HCI, often challenging current practices. Each issue we'll publish selected posts from some of the leading and emerging voices in the field.

Background: Mandatory rules for social distancing to curb the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic require individuals to maintain a critical interpersonal distance above 1.5 m. However, this contradicts our natural preference, which is closer to 1 m for non-intimate encounters, for example, when asking a stranger for directions. Objective: This review addresses...

Augmented Reality (AR) provides a unique opportunity to situate learning content in one's environment. In this work, we investigated how AR could be developed to provide an interactive context-based language learning experience. Specifically, we developed a novel handheld-AR app for learning case grammar by dynamically creating quizzes, based on re...

This work presents a visual analytics approach to explore microsaccade distributions in high-frequency eye tracking data. Research studies often apply filter algorithms and parameter values for microsaccade detection. Even when the same algorithms are employed, different parameter values might be adopted across different studies. In this paper, we...

Even with highly automated driving, there will exist the occasional need for a human driver to resume control. The design of take-over requests (TOR) and the driving scenario upon their presentation are factors that can be expected to determine the effective resumption of vehicle control. We conducted a driving simulator study in the laboratory tha...

This video shows a concept of a future mobile office in a semi-automated vehicle that uses augmented reality. People perform non-driving tasks in current, non-automated vehicles even though that is unsafe. Moreover, even for passengers there is limited space, it is not social, and there can be motion sickness. In future cars, technology such as aug...

Driver assistance system development commonly targets a substitution of driver responsibilities. Such a substitutive approach which ignores the potential of utilizing available human resources has at least two downsides: 1. The human mind has not evolved to stay idle such that people tend to engage in secondary tasks and disengage from the driving...

Driving simulators are necessary for evaluating automotive technology for human users. While they can vary in terms of their fidelity, it is essential that users experience minimal simulator sickness and high presence in them. In this paper, we present two experiments that investigate how a virtual driving simulation system could be visually presen...

There are more types of vehicles than the automobile. Many are used for purposes other than transporting passengers or goods. They are often dedicated to enable the user in performing specific manual tasks, in parallel to driving. Such heavy vehicles range from construction vehicles, such as excavators and articulated haulers, to agriculture vehicl...

The use of color-tinted lenses can introduce profound effects into how we process visual information at the early to late stages. Besides mediating harsh lighting conditions, some evidence suggests that color-tinted lenses can influence how humans respond to emotional events. In this study, we systematically evaluated how color-tinted lenses modifi...

By orienting attention, auditory cues can improve the discrimination of spatially congruent visual targets. Looming sounds that increase in intensity are processed preferentially by the brain. Thus, we investigated whether auditory looming cues can orient visuo-spatial attention more effectively than static and receding sounds. Specifically, differ...

Current neuroscientific models of bodily self-consciousness (BSC) argue that inaccurate integration of sensory signals leads to altered states of BSC. Indeed, using virtual reality technology, observers viewing a fake or virtual body while being exposed to tactile stimulation of the real body, can experience illusory ownership over–and mislocalizat...

Touchscreens are a common fixture in current vehicles. With autonomous driving, we can expect touch interaction with such in-vehicle media systems to exponentially increase. In spite of vehicle suspension systems, road perturbations will continue to exert forces that can render in-vehicle touch interaction challenging. Using a motion simulator, we...

Currently offered autonomous vehicles still require the human intervention. For instance, when the system fails to perform as expected or adapts to unanticipated situations. Given that reliability of autonomous systems can fluctuate across conditions, this work is a first step towards understanding how this information ought to be communicated to u...

This workshop discusses the balance between safety and productivity as automated vehicles turn into 'mobile offices': spaces where non-driving activities are performed during one's daily commute. Technological developments reduce the active role of the human driver that might, nonetheless, require occasional intervention. To what extent are drivers...

Looming sounds can be an ideal warning notification for emergency braking. This agrees with studies that have consistently demonstrated preferential brain processing for looming stimuli. This study investigates and demonstrates that looming sounds can similarly benefit emergency braking in managing a vehicle with adaptive cruise control (ACC). Spec...

Manual assembly at production is a mentally demanding task. With rapid prototyping and smaller production lot sizes, this results in frequent changes of assembly instructions that have to be memorized by workers. Assistive systems compensate this increase in mental workload by providing "just-in-time" assembly instructions through in-situ projectio...

There is a growing interest in eye tracking technologies applied to support traditional visualization techniques like diagrams, charts, maps, or plots, either static, animated, or interactive ones. More complex data analyses are required to derive knowledge and meaning from the data. Eye tracking systems serve that purpose in combination with biolo...

There is a growing interest in eye tracking technologies applied to support traditional visualization techniques like diagrams, charts, maps, or plots, either static, animated, or interactive ones. More complex data analyses are required to derive knowledge and meaning from the data. Eye tracking systems serve that purpose in combination with biolo...

Viewpoint selection has been an emerging area in computer graphics for some years, and it is now getting maturity with applications in fields such as scene navigation, scientific visualization, object recognition, mesh simplification, and camera placement. In this survey, we review and compare twenty-two measures to select good views of a polygonal...

Take-over requests (TORs) in highly automated vehicles are cues that prompt users to resume control. TORs however, are often evaluated in non-moving driving simulators. This ignores the role of motion, an important source of information for users who have their eyes off the road while engaged in non-driving related tasks. We ran a user study in a m...

Design recommendations for notifications are typically based on user performance and subjective feedback. In comparison, there has been surprisingly little research on how designed notifications might be processed by the brain for the information they convey. The current study uses EEG/ERP methods to evaluate auditory notifications that were design...

This special interest group addresses the status quo of HCI research with regards to research practices of transparency and openness. Specifically, it discusses whether current practices are in line with the standards applied to other fields (e.g., psychology, economics, medicine). It seeks to identify current practices that are more progressive an...

Objective This study investigates the neural basis of inattentional deafness, which could result from task irrelevance in the auditory modality. Background Humans can fail to respond to auditory alarms under high workload situations. This failure, termed inattentional deafness, is often attributed to high workload in the visual modality, which red...

Modern advances in neuroscientific methods, which are increasingly portable and easy-to-use (e.g., EEG, fNIRS), allow us to understand how the brain allows us to accomplish diverse activities in our real-world environment - from walking to piloting an aircraft to navigating a virtual computing desktop. To add, technology for tracking behavior and m...

We introduce a Hidden Markov Model framework to formalize the beliefs that humans may have about the mode in which a semi-automated vehicle is operating. Previous research has identified various "levels of automation," which serve to clarify the di↵erent degrees of a vehicle's automation capabilities and expected operator involvement. However, a ve...

In this study, we demonstrate the effects of anxiety and cognitive load on eye movement planning in an instrument flight task adhering to a single-sensor-single-indicator data visualisation design philosophy. The task was performed in neutral and anxiety conditions, while a low or high cognitive load, auditory n-back task was also performed. Cognit...

It is increasingly viable to measure the brain activity of mobile users, as they go about their everyday business in their natural world environment. This is due to: (i) modern signal processing methods, (ii) lightweight and cost-effective measurement devices, and (iii) a better, albeit incomplete, understanding of how measurable brain activity rel...

The hands of one's avatar are possibly the most visible aspect when interacting in virtual reality (VR). As video games in VR proliferate, it is important to understand how the appearance of avatar hands influence the user experience. Designers of video games often stylize hands and reduce the number of fingers of game characters. Previous work sho...

In this study, we employ EEG methods to clarify why auditory notifications, which were designed for task management in highly automated trucks, resulted in different performance behavior, when deployed in two different test settings: (a) student volunteers in a lab environment, (b) professional truck drivers in a realistic vehicle simulator. Behavi...

Current levels of vehicle automation (i.e., SAE-L2) require users to be vigilant and to intervene when automated vehicles fail to perform appropriately. In this work, we developed a scenario for investigating how humans respond, in the absence of notifications for system failure. In order to develop better notifications to elicit user intervention,...

This workshop addresses how in-vehicle interfaces could be designed to support humans in understanding how highly automated vehicles (HAVs) operate. Current practices describe levels of automation in terms of technological limitations and expect users to accommodate. However, humans might not be able to understand the implications of technical limi...

We are often confronted with information interfaces designed in an unfamiliar language, especially in an increasingly globalized world, where the language barrier inhibits interaction with the system. In our work, we explore the design space for building interfaces that can detect the user's language proficiency. Specifically, we look at how a user...

Informing a driver of a vehicle’s changing state and environment is a major challenge that grows with the introduction of in-vehicle assistant and infotainment systems. Even in the age of automation, the human will need to be in the loop for monitoring, taking over control, or making decisions. In these cases, poorly designed systems could lead to...

Eye-movements are typically measured with video cameras and image recognition algorithms. Unfortunately, these systems are susceptible to changes in illumination during measurements. Electrooculography (EOG) is another approach for measuring eye-movements that does not suffer from the same weakness. Here, we introduce and compare two methods that a...

This book discusses research, methods, and recent developments in the interdisciplinary field that spans research in visualization, eye tracking, human-computer interaction, and psychology. It presents extended versions of papers from the First Workshop on Eye Tracking and Visualization (ETVIS), which was organized as a workshop of the IEEE VIS Con...

On July 1st 2016, the first automated vehicle fatality became headline news [9] and caused a nationwide wave of concern. Now we have at least one situation in which a controlled automated vehicle system failed to detect a life threatening situation. The question still remains: How can an autonomous system make ethical decisions that involve human l...

This workshop will focus on the problem of occupant and vehicle situational awareness with respect to automated vehicles when the driver must take over control. It will explore the future of fully automated and mixed traffic situations where vehicles are assumed to be operating at level 3 or above. In this case, all critical driving functions will...

Managing drivers' distraction and directing their attention has been a challenge for automotive UI researchers both in industry and academia. The objective of this half-day tutorial is to provide an overview of methodologies for design, development, and evaluation of in-vehicle attention-directing user interfaces. The tutorial will introduce specif...

Humans are inherently skilled at using subtle physiological cues from other persons, for example gaze direction in a conversation. Personal computers have yet to explore this implicit input modality. In a study with 14 participants, we investigate how a user's gaze can be leveraged in adaptive computer systems. In particular, we examine the impact...

Previous research has rarely examined the combined influence of anxiety and cognitive load on gaze behavior and performance whilst undertaking complex perceptual-motor tasks. In the current study, participants performed an aviation instrument landing task in neutral and anxiety conditions, while performing a low or high cognitive load auditory n-bac...

Unrestricted gaze tracking that allows for head and body movements can enable us to understand interactive gaze behavior with large-scale visualizations. Approaches that support this, by simultaneously recording eye- and user-movements, can either be based on geometric or data-driven regression models. A data-driven approach can be implemented more...

Auditory warnings are often used to direct a user’s attention from a primary task to critical peripheral events. In the context of traffic, in-vehicle collision avoidance systems could, for example, employ spatially relevant sounds to alert the driver to the possible presence of a crossing pedestrian. This raises the question: What is an effective...

The cognitive workload of a steering task could reflect its demand on attentional as well as working memory resources under different conditions. These respective demands could be differentiated by evaluating components of the event-related potential (ERP) response to different types of stimulus probes, which are claimed to reflect the availability...

Before initiating a saccade to a moving target, the brain must take into account the target's eccentricity as well as its movement direction and speed. We tested how the kinematic characteristics of the target influence the time course of this oculomotor response. Participants performed a step-ramp task in which the target object stepped from a cen...

Delays between user input and the system’s reaction in control tasks have been shown to have a detrimental effect on performance. This is often accompanied by increases in self-reported workload. In the current work, we sought to identify physiological measures that correlate with pilot workload in a conceptual aerial vehicle that suffered from var...