Assessing pilot trainees’ Situation Awareness (SA) is critical for aviation safety and efficiency. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of three distinct eye-tracking metrics, gaze-based metrics, gaze patterns, and gaze entropy, in measuring the SA levels of pilot trainees. A between-subject experiment compared two trainee groups: one received standard training, and the other received training enhanced with vibrotactile feedback. Participants’ eye movements were recorded using wearable eye-tracking glasses before and after training. The experimental group showed improved flight performance, advanced gaze-based metrics, more organized gaze patterns, and increased gaze entropy. These results demonstrate that eye-tracking metrics can effectively reflect SA changes, with gaze entropy significantly correlating with SA measurements and indicating higher SA levels. The study highlights the feasibility of using eye-tracking to evaluate SA in pilot training. Future research should explore varied task complexities and extended training durations to validate these findings and assess long-term impacts.

Ultrasonic mid-air haptics (UMH) has emerged as a promising technology for facial haptic applications, offering the advantage of contactless and high-resolution feedback. Despite this, previous studies have fallen short in thoroughly investigating individuals’ responses to UMH on the face. To bridge this gap, this study compares UMH feedback on various facial sites using the lateral modulation (LM) method. This method allows us to explore the impact of two LM parameters -frequency and amplitude - on both perceptual (intensity) and emotional (valence and arousal) responses. With 24 participants, positive relationships between LM amplitude and perceived intensity and arousal were observed, and the effect of LM frequency varied across facial sites. These findings not only contribute to the development of design guidelines and potential applications for UMH on the face, but also provide insights aimed to enhance the effectiveness and overall user experience in haptic interactions across diverse facial sites.

Considering that a significant portion of the current pedestrian population has limited exposure to automated vehicles (AVs), it is crucial to have a reliable instrument for assessing pedestrians’ initial trust in AVs. Using a survey of 436 pedestrians, this study developed and validated a PITQA (Pedestrians’ Initial Trust Questionnaire for AVs) scale using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The proposed scale will be valuable in monitoring the progression of trust over time and considering trust-related factors during the design process. The results revealed that seven key constructs significantly contribute to predicting initial trust between pedestrians and AVs. These constructs include propensity to trust, perceived statistical reliability, dependability and competence, perceived predictability, familiarity, authority/subversion, care/harm, and sanctity/degradation. These shed light on how the trust propensity of individuals, different trust/trustworthiness attributes might constitute different aspects of initial trust in the pedestrian-AV context. The developed scale can be a potentially useful tool for future research endeavors concerning trust calibration and the design of AVs specifically tailored for vulnerable road users.

Automated vehicles (AVs) are one critical application area of artificial intelligence (AI). However, a lack of appropriate trust can be a major barrier to successfully introducing AVs into the market. The objective of this study is to summarize and synthesize the existing literature to gain a greater understanding of factors that will potentially influence the development of pedestrians’ trust in AVs over time. Since AVs will become part of a larger infrastructure system that influences more than just AV users, they should also be accepted by pedestrians and other road users. There is a need for pedestrians to form appropriate levels of trust toward AVs to achieve safe interaction with such vehicles in circumstances characterized by uncertainty and vulnerability. Consequently, factors relevant to the building of this appropriate trust must be understood. By integrating the reviewed empirical studies and related theories, a theoretical model has been proposed and developed, comprising three layers of variability in pedestrian-AV trust (dispositional trust, situational trust, and learned trust). Given that this is an emerging field of research, much still remains unknown, and this review identifies several gaps in current knowledge for each layer of trust, as well as providing suggestions for consideration in future studies. Additionally, the proposed model of pedestrian-AV trust can be useful to transportation researchers, practitioners, designers, and AV manufacturers for designing AVs and related transportation systems for the purposes of successfully integrating AVs into society, and calibrating pedestrians’ trust to the appropriate level.