• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.473-482
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• 2015

Recent development in science and technology has enabled vehicles to be equipped with advanced autonomous functions. ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) are examples of such advanced autonomous systems added. Advanced systems have several operational modes and it has been observed that drivers could be unaware of the mode they are in during vehicle operation, which can be a contributing factor of traffic accidents. In this study, possible mode confusions in a simulated environment when vehicles are equipped with an adaptive cruise control system were investigated. The mental model of the system was designed and verified using the formal analysis method. Then, the user interface was designed on the basis of those of the current cruise control systems. A set of human-in-loop experiments was conducted to observe possible mode confusions and redesign the user interface to reduce them. In conclusion, the clarity and transparency of the user interface was proved to be as important as the correctness and compactness of the mental model when reducing mode confusions.