Evaluation Study of Intelligent Vehicle Virtual Personal Assistant

With the outburst of the intelligent vehicle market, vehicle Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA), as an important interactive interface of drivers and smart vehicles, will be more and more common in our daily life. Since VPA is the carrier of Voice User Interaction, previous VPA research topics mainly focus on the field of voice interaction and personification, such as personification, emotionalization, gender cognition preference, and role cognition preference. However, there is a growing demand to comprehensively evaluate vehicle VPA experience, concentrating on the vehicle application field. In this study, we constructed a vehicle VPA experience evaluation model and verified its validity and reliability. There are 3 phases included in this study: (a) First of all, through interviews with 20 real users, we extracted users' perception elements of vehicle VPA, summarized the factors affecting the experience of vehicle VPA, and converted them into the initial dimensions of the evaluation model, included Sensory Comfort, Depth Assistance, Natural Interaction, Pleasant Emotions 4 modules. (b)Secondly, we invited 10 vehicle VPA designers to discuss and adjust the model based on professionals suggestions. (c) Thirdly, to verify the adjusted model, 364 vehicle VPA users (including NIO(ET/ES/EC), XPENG(P5/P7), Li One, Lynk&Co 09) were invited to participate in an online questionnaire. Reliability analysis, validity analysis, and factor analysis are carried out to confirm the quality of the questionnaire and to complete the structural adjustment of the model. The final output of the vehicle VPA evaluation model included 5 first-level indicators, 7 s-level indicators, and 45 third-level indicators. First-level indicators include Sensory, Resource, Interaction, Emotion, Design modules. Among third-level indicators, high influence (weight) ones are Voice of VPA coverage span, Comprehension Accuracy, Recognition Accuracy, Sense of Trust, and Satisfaction of Resource Content. This vehicle VPA experience evaluation model study is grounded on real driver interviews and questionnaires, reflecting vehicle VPA daily users' demands, and comprehensively evaluating Sensory, Resource, Interaction, Emotion, Design, and 5 modules. It can be scientific guidelines for vehicle VPA design and product diagnosis.