Is it the duration of the ride or the non-driving related task? what affects take-over performance in conditional automated driving?

Conditional Automated Driving (SAE Level 3) is expected to be introduced to the consumer market within the next few years. In this level of automation, the dynamic driving task is executed by the system and the human driver can engage in non-driving related tasks and just has to intervene if requested by the system. As it is assumed, that the human driver may have problems regaining control of the vehicle, studies on take-over performance are in the focus of human factors research right now. It is examined whether the human driver is capable of regaining vehicle control and what factors influence take-over performance of the human driver. In this paper, take-over situations of two studies that just differed in the duration of the automated driving are compared. The studies were both conducted at BMW laboratories in a motion based driving simulator. Take-over performance of the participants was rated using the video-based TOC expert rating tool by three trained raters. Results suggest, that take-over performance strongly differs among individuals and that such take-over situations can cause problems for a majority of the participants. Especially in prolonged conditional automated driving the human driver needs to be supported when it comes to a take-over situation. The influence of the duration of the ride seems to be stronger than that of the non-driving related task.