An Adaptive Head-Up Display to Support Non-Driving Activities in Semi-Automated Vehicles

The level of automation of today's cars is constantly increasing. As semi-automated vehicles will be available in the near future, the driver has now the opportunity to perform also non-driving related activities. To ensure short times for the driver to take back control over the car when executing a non-driving related activity, using a head-up display (HUD) is an interesting approach as it provides a higher situational awareness compared to head-down displays (HDDs). This thesis examines how a HUD could be designed to support non-driving related activities in semi-automated vehicles. In semi-automated vehicles, drivers do not have to monitor the environment the whole time anymore. Therefore, a windshield display (WSD) could be used as an extension of a HUD. A WSD is defined here as a HUD using the whole windshield as a screen. The focus of this thesis is to analyze the design factor of transparency in WSDs with respect to situational awareness in different example applications.