Highly Automated Platooning: Effects on Mental Workload, Stress and Fatigue

Automatically driving platoons of vehicles are a likely candidate for solving many existing issues of road safety and congestion. However, the psychological effects of such technology are yet to be understood. Therefore, by... [ view full abstract ]

Automatically driving platoons of vehicles are a likely candidate for solving many existing issues of road safety and congestion. However, the psychological effects of such technology are yet to be understood. Therefore, by means of a driving simulator experiment, we aimed to assess the psychological effects of driving in a highly automated platoon. The results showed that the type of task had no substantial effect on heart rate and self-reported stress, fatigue, and workload. However, time-on-task substantially reduced participants’ heart rate.