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Understanding and mitigating drivers' negative emotions, stress levels, and anxiety is of high importance for decreasing accident rates, and enhancing road safety. While detecting drivers' stress and negative emotions can significantly help with this goal, understanding what might be associated with increases in drivers' negative emotions and high stress level, might better help with planning interventions. While studies have provided significant insight into detecting drivers' emotions and stress levels, not many studies focused on the reasons behind changes in stress levels and negative emotions. In this study, by using a naturalistic driving study database, we analyze the changes in the driving scene, including road objects and the dynamical relationship between the ego vehicle and the lead vehicle with respect to changes in drivers' psychophysiological metrics (i.e., heart rate (HR) and facial expressions). Our results indicate that different road objects might be associated with varying levels of increase in drivers' HR as well as different proportions of negative facial emotions detected through computer vision. Larger vehicles on the road, such as trucks and buses, are associated with the highest amount of increase in drivers' HR as well as negative emotions. Additionally, shorter distances and higher standard deviation in the distance to the lead vehicle are associated with a higher number of abrupt increases in drivers' HR, depicting a possible increase in stress level. Our finding indicates more positive emotions, lower facial engagement, and a lower abrupt increase in HR at a higher speed of driving, which often happens in highway environments. This research collectively shows that driving at higher speeds happening in highways by avoiding certain road objects might be a better fit for keeping drivers in a calmer, more positive state.

With advances in Building Information Modeling (BIM), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have many potential applications in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. However, the AEC industry, relative to other industries, has been slow in adopting AR/VR technologies, partly due to lack of feasibility studies examining the actual cost of implementation versus an increase in profit. The main objectives of this paper are to understand the industry trends in adopting AR/VR technologies and identifying gaps between AEC research and industry practices. The identified gaps can lead to opportunities for developing new tools and finding new use cases. To achieve these goals, two rounds of a survey at two different time periods (a year apart) were conducted. Responses from 158 industry experts and researchers were analyzed to assess the current state, growth, and saving opportunities for AR/VR technologies for the AEC industry. The authors used t-test for hypothesis testing. The findings show a significant increase in AR/VR utilization in the AEC industry over the past year from 2017 to 2018. The industry experts also anticipate strong growth in the use of AR/VR technologies over the next 5 to 10 years.