Influences of multimodal redundant alarm design on reaction performance of armored vehicle crew under noise environment

In order to investigate the effect of different multimodal redundant alarm design on the reaction performance of armored vehicle occupants under a noisy environment, 24 participants were recruited and subjected to simulation driving experiments utilizing a new type of high-fidelity armored vehicle semi physical simulation platform. Three alarm redundancies were tested: visual channel, auditory channel, and audio-visual dual channel designs, across high and low noise conditions. The findings demonstrate that, in comparison to the visual channel redundancies, drivers' response error rate and reaction time to warnings are substantially reduced in the auditory channel redundancies and audio-visual dual channel redundancies. The response error is generally lower in low noise environments than in high noise environments, although response time remains consistent across noise conditions. The interaction between noise conditions and alarm design does not significantly affect alarm response performance, eye movement indicators, or subjective workload scores. Comparing the multimodal alarm with redundant auditory prompts to the visual-only redundancy, the study finds that the former significantly enhances drivers' reaction to warning information. However, the combination of auditory and visual redundancy does not yield further performance improvements. A low noise environment positively influences response performance enhancement.