Gorillas on a boat: Inattentional blindness during supervisory control of autonomous vessels

Abstract

When focused on a task, unexpected visual stimuli can go by unnoticed. Inattentional blindness may be problematic for supervisory controllers of autonomous vessels, because this role specifically relies on identifying unexpected stimuli in case intervention is needed. In a simulation-based experiment (n=32), we show that 50% of participants did not perceive an unexpected visual stimulus (a gorilla passenger) when assigned the task of supervisory controller for an autonomous ferry. Additionally, eye-tracking showed that 12 of the 16 players who did not report the gorilla in fact gazed directly at it. Results also showed no correlation to skillset (gamer or navigator) nor to vigilance (5- or 30-minute scenarios); they did, however, show positive correlation to multitasking (1 or 3 supervised vessels). We discuss implications for designing work tasks for supervisory control of remotely operated and autonomous vessels.