Current Status and Challenges in Usability Evaluation Research on Human–Machine Interaction in Intelligent Vehicles: A Systematic Review

Usability evaluation is a crucial stage in optimizing human–machine interaction design for intelligent vehicles. The academic community has accumulated substantial research findings on this topic. However, the global landscape, core focus areas, and potential challenges of these findings remain unclear and require systematic review and analysis. This is essential for understanding progress in the field and clarifying future research and technological development directions. To address this research need, we followed the PRISMA guidelines and conducted a systematic review of 158 applied research cases in the field of usability evaluation for intelligent vehicle human–machine interaction. We focused on analyzing the automation levels, task scenarios, and interaction modalities examined in these cases. Based on this analysis, we examined the current development status and potential challenges and identified future development recommendations for this field. Our research reveals that current usability evaluation studies of intelligent vehicle human–machine interaction exhibit a contradictory pattern of “coexisting development and limitations.” On the one hand, the research scope and depth continue to expand with technological advances. On the other hand, related research topics show obvious lag, with particularly insufficient research on non-driving tasks and multimodal interaction topics. The potential challenges arising from this research status seriously constrain industry development and require practitioners to actively address them. In this regard, our research findings provide a valuable reference for practitioners in understanding the current research progress and planning future development directions.