Encouraging eco-driving: the case for vibrotactile information presented through the accelerator pedal

different methods of in-vehicle information presentation to encourage fuel efficient driving behaviours, and to explore the theoretical justifications for the use of in-vehicle haptic stimuli (related to the sense of touch), presented at the site of control (i.e., the accelerator pedal). A review of the literature concerning design, behaviour, and energy use led on to an exploration of Ecological Interface Design, and the Skills, Rules, and Knowledge (SRK) taxonomy of human behaviour, particularly with regard to haptic information presented through the accelerator pedal. Survey and on-road studies served to shed light on the practice of eco-driving more generally, in terms of attitudes, knowledge, behaviour, and cognition. Then followed an analysis of expert eco-drivers’ decision-making processes. This made use of the decision ladder, an analysis tool rooted in the SRK framework. Results of the analysis went on to inform the design of an in-vehicle information system that aimed to support optimum use of the accelerator pedal, both for efficient accelerations, and for maximisation of the coasting phase of the vehicle when approaching deceleration events. A simulator-based experiment served to assess the effects of presenting stimuli in different sensory modes (visual, auditory, vibrotactile), resulting in the conclusion that vibrotactile feedback, being both effective and well received by participants, is indeed suitable for the support of eco-driving. In a second simulator-based study, coasting support provided the sole focus; acceleration behaviours were not investigated. Results suggested that there is a minimum distance away from an event below which stimuli encouraging removal of the foot from the accelerator pedal (in order to coast down to the desired speed)have neither a beneficial effect on driving performance, nor attract positive acceptance ratings from users. Moreover, stimuli presented farther from the event supported greater benefits in terms of efficiency. Overall findings are discussed with regard to the practical aspect of how best to support eco-driving in the private road vehicle, and in relation to the theoretical justifications for accelerator-based haptic feedback in the vehicle

Eco-driving technology for sustainable road transport: A review

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Road transport consumes significant quantities of fossil fuel and accounts for a significant proportion of CO2 and pollutant emissions worldwide. The driver is a major and often overlooked factor that determines vehicle performance. Eco-driving is a relatively low-cost and immediate measure to reduce fuel consumption and emissions significantly. This paper reviews the major factors, research methods and implementation of eco-driving technology. The major factors of eco-driving are acceleration/deceleration, driving speed, route choice and idling. Eco-driving training programs and in-vehicle feedback devices are commonly used to implement eco-driving skills. After training or using in-vehicle devices, immediate and significant reductions in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions have been observed with slightly increased travel time. However, the impacts of both methods attenuate over time due to the ingrained driving habits developed over the years. These findings imply the necessity of developing quantitative eco-driving patterns that could be integrated into vehicle hardware so as to generate more constant and uniform improvements, as well as developing more effective and lasting training programs and in-vehicle devices. Current eco-driving studies mainly focus on the fuel savings and CO2 reduction of individual vehicles, but ignore the pollutant emissions and the impacts at network levels. Finally, the challenges and future research directions of eco-driving technology are elaborated

Design and Effect of Continuous Wearable Tactile Displays

Our sense of touch is one of our core senses and while not as information rich as sight and hearing, it tethers us to reality. Our skin is the largest sensory organ in our body and we rely on it so much that we don\u27t think about it most of the time. Tactile displays - with the exception of actuators for notifications on smartphones and smartwatches - are currently understudied and underused. Currently tactile cues are mostly used in smartphones and smartwatches to notify the user of an incoming call or text message. Specifically continuous displays - displays that do not just send one notification but stay active for an extended period of time and continuously communicate information - are rarely studied. This thesis aims at exploring the utilization of our vibration perception to create continuous tactile displays. Transmitting a continuous stream of tactile information to a user in a wearable format can help elevate tactile displays from being mostly used for notifications to becoming more like additional senses enabling us to perceive our environment in new ways. This work provides a serious step forward in design, effect and use of continuous tactile displays and their use in human-computer interaction. The main contributions include: Exploration of Continuous Wearable Tactile Interfaces This thesis explores continuous tactile displays in different contexts and with different types of tactile information systems. The use-cases were explored in various domains for tactile displays - Sports, Gaming and Business applications. The different types of continuous tactile displays feature one- or multidimensional tactile patterns, temporal patterns and discrete tactile patterns. Automatic Generation of Personalized Vibration Patterns In this thesis a novel approach of designing vibrotactile patterns without expert knowledge by leveraging evolutionary algorithms to create personalized vibration patterns - is described. This thesis presents the design of an evolutionary algorithm with a human centered design generating abstract vibration patterns. The evolutionary algorithm was tested in a user study which offered evidence that interactive generation of abstract vibration patterns is possible and generates diverse sets of vibration patterns that can be recognized with high accuracy. Passive Haptic Learning for Vibration Patterns Previous studies in passive haptic learning have shown surprisingly strong results for learning Morse Code. If these findings could be confirmed and generalized, it would mean that learning a new tactile alphabet could be made easier and learned in passing. Therefore this claim was investigated in this thesis and needed to be corrected and contextualized. A user study was conducted to study the effects of the interaction design and distraction tasks on the capability to learn stimulus-stimulus-associations with Passive Haptic Learning. This thesis presents evidence that Passive Haptic Learning of vibration patterns induces only a marginal learning effect and is not a feasible and efficient way to learn vibration patterns that include more than two vibrations. Influence of Reference Frames for Spatial Tactile Stimuli Designing wearable tactile stimuli that contain spatial information can be a challenge due to the natural body movement of the wearer. An important consideration therefore is what reference frame to use for spatial cues. This thesis investigated allocentric versus egocentric reference frames on the wrist and compared them for induced cognitive load, reaction time and accuracy in a user study. This thesis presents evidence that using an allocentric reference frame drastically lowers cognitive load and slightly lowers reaction time while keeping the same accuracy as an egocentric reference frame, making a strong case for the utilization of allocentric reference frames in tactile bracelets with several tactile actuators

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications

Exploration of mid-air haptics experience design

Ultrasonic Mid-air Haptics (UMH) is a novel technology that uses the mechanical properties of sound waves to create a pressure point in mid-air. This pressure point, called focal point, can slightly bend the skin and be felt in mid-air without any attachment to the body. This thesis focuses on both studying how to integrate this technology with other senses (i.e. vision and audition) and exploring the range of tactile sensations it can provide. The first two projects presented in this document present the integration of ultrasonic mid-air haptics with audio-visual content. The first project describes the process of creating a unique haptic experience that was part of a six-weeks multisensory exhibition in a museum. The second project moved from the museum to a controlled environment and explored the creation of haptic experiences based on physiologic measurements for six short films. Both studies showed the positive value of adding ultrasonic mid-air haptics to traditional media through higher reported arousal and participants’ high enthusiasm for multisensory content. In the two latter projects of this thesis, it was explored how we could extend the range of possible tactile sensations provided by UMHs. We introduced a new technique called Spatio-Temporal Modulation (STM). It enabled the creation of brand-new tactile experiences, including more salient shapes and wider range of textures. We also provided some guidelines on how to control some of the tactile properties of the sensation, including strength,roughness,or regularity. The findings of those four projects contribute to the growing body of knowledge of UMHs. A summary of the key contributions is provided at the end of the thesis as well as several leads for future works

Human emotional response to automotive steering wheel vibration: development of a driver emotional semantic scale

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe 21st century automobile has become more than just a simple tool for transportation and more of a brand image or a way for drivers to express their personal taste. This has made it increasingly important for automotive manufacturers to design the driver experience and driver feeling so as to tailor their preferences and interests. Currently there is not enough information on how to design or brand the communication of meaningful feedback from the automobile to the driver. With the development of new advanced technologies such as electric steer-by-wire systems or electric automobiles, the need to provide meaningful feedback to the driver plays a central role in the experience of using the new driving technology. Thus it is important to understand how to assess the emotional response to the stimuli reaching the driver so to be able to optimise at later stage the perceived experience. Steering wheel vibration feedback plays an important role for the driver’s control input when driving. There is currently a lack of research on the formal assessment criteria of driver emotional response used to define automotive steering wheel vibration feedback, therefore this thesis proposes a newly Driver Emotional Semantic (DES) Scale to answer the research question: “How can the emotional response to steering wheel vibration be assessed?”. This study starts with a comparison of a questionnaire survey (Exp.1) and a laboratory test (Exp.2) to identify if a correlation exists between the emotional ratings measured from the expected driver’s perception of the vibration and the experienced emotional feeling of steering wheel vibration. The work then defines a semantic scale to capture the vibrational vocabulary used by the driver to express their feeling of perceived vibration during real-road driving scenarios. Experiment 3 was therefore carried out to gather the underlying semantic descriptors used by drivers during driving scenarios. To test the reliability of the descriptive pairs of the DES rating scale developed, two evaluations of the assessment criteria were carried out: in real road scenarios (Exp.4) and laboratory test setting (Exp.5). Current research findings of this thesis suggest that the consistency of the scale dimensions found in the field study has captured with greater accuracy the driver semantic experience of automotive steering wheel vibration character as compared to the laboratory experiment dimensionality. Results suggest that the main vibrotactile semantic descriptors to assess the human emotional response to automotive steering wheel vibration were found to be four: pleasant, smooth, sharp and powerful. The final proposed DES scale could help automotive research and industry determine and customise the aspects of the automobile towards drivers’ preferences of felt experience

Evaluation of the Driving Performance and User Acceptance of a Predictive Eco-Driving Assistance System for Electric Vehicles

In this work, a predictive eco-driving assistance system (pEDAS) with the goal to assist drivers in improving their driving style and thereby reducing the energy consumption in battery electric vehicles while enhancing the driving safety and comfort is introduced and evaluated. pEDAS in this work is equipped with two model predictive controllers (MPCs), namely reference-tracking MPC and car-following MPC, that use the information from onboard sensors, signal phase and timing (SPaT) messages from traffic light infrastructure, and geographical information of the driving route to compute an energy-optimal driving speed. An optimal speed suggestion and informative advice are indicated to the driver using a visual feedback. pEDAS provides continuous feedback and encourages the drivers to perform energy-efficient car-following while tracking a preceding vehicle, travel at safe speeds at turns and curved roads, drive at energy-optimal speed determined using dynamic programming in freeway scenarios, and travel with a green-wave optimal speed to cross the signalized intersections at a green phase whenever possible. Furthermore, to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed pEDAS, user studies were conducted with 41 participants on a dynamic driving simulator. The objective analysis revealed that the drivers achieved mean energy savings up to 10%, reduced the speed limit violations, and avoided unnecessary stops at signalized intersections by using pEDAS. Finally, the user acceptance of the proposed pEDAS was evaluated using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The results showed an overall positive attitude of users and that the perceived usefulness and perceived behavioral control were found to be the significant factors in influencing the behavioral intention to use pEDAS.Comment: Submitted to Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies Journa

Effects of modality, urgency and situation on responses to multimodal warnings for drivers

Signifying road-related events with warnings can be highly beneficial, especially when imminent attention is needed. This thesis describes how modality, urgency and situation can influence driver responses to multimodal displays used as warnings. These displays utilise all combinations of audio, visual and tactile modalities, reflecting different urgency levels. In this way, a new rich set of cues is designed, conveying information multimodally, to enhance reactions during driving, which is a highly visual task. The importance of the signified events to driving is reflected in the warnings, and safety-critical or non-critical situations are communicated through the cues. Novel warning designs are considered, using both abstract displays, with no semantic association to the signified event, and language-based ones, using speech. These two cue designs are compared, to discover their strengths and weaknesses as car alerts. The situations in which the new cues are delivered are varied, by simulating both critical and non-critical events and both manual and autonomous car scenarios. A novel set of guidelines for using multimodal driver displays is finally provided, considering the modalities utilised, the urgency signified, and the situation simulated

Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments

This open access book tackles the design of 3D spatial interactions in an audio-centered and audio-first perspective, providing the fundamental notions related to the creation and evaluation of immersive sonic experiences. The key elements that enhance the sensation of place in a virtual environment (VE) are: Immersive audio: the computational aspects of the acoustical-space properties of Virutal Reality (VR) technologies Sonic interaction: the human-computer interplay through auditory feedback in VE VR systems: naturally support multimodal integration, impacting different application domains Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments will feature state-of-the-art research on real-time auralization, sonic interaction design in VR, quality of the experience in multimodal scenarios, and applications. Contributors and editors include interdisciplinary experts from the fields of computer science, engineering, acoustics, psychology, design, humanities, and beyond. Their mission is to shape an emerging new field of study at the intersection of sonic interaction design and immersive media, embracing an archipelago of existing research spread in different audio communities and to increase among the VR communities, researchers, and practitioners, the awareness of the importance of sonic elements when designing immersive environments

The activation of eco-driving mental models: can text messages prime drivers to use their existing knowledge and skills?

Eco-driving campaigns have traditionally assumed that drivers lack the necessary knowledge and skills and that this is something that needs rectifying. Therefore, many support systems have been designed to closely guide drivers and fine-tune their proficiency. However, research suggests that drivers already possess a substantial amount of the necessary knowledge and skills regarding eco-driving. In previous studies, participants used these effectively when they were explicitly asked to drive fuel-efficiently. In contrast, they used their safe driving skills when they were instructed to drive as they would normally. Hence, it is assumed that many drivers choose not to engage purposefully in eco-driving in their everyday lives. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of simple, periodic text messages (nine messages in 2 weeks) on drivers’ eco- and safe driving performance. It was hypothesised that provision of eco-driving primes and advice would encourage the activation of their eco-driving mental models and that comparable safety primes increase driving safety. For this purpose, a driving simulator experiment was conducted. All participants performed a pre-test drive and were then randomly divided into four groups, which received different interventions. For a period of 2 weeks, one group received text messages with eco-driving primes and another group received safety primes. A third group received advice messages on how to eco-drive. The fourth group were instructed by the experimenter to drive fuel-efficiently, immediately before driving, with no text message intervention. A post-test drive measured behavioural changes in scenarios deemed relevant to eco- and safe driving. The results suggest that the eco-driving prime and advice text messages did not have the desired effect. In comparison, asking drivers to drive fuel-efficiently led to eco-driving behaviours. These outcomes demonstrate the difficulty in changing ingrained habits. Future research is needed to strengthen such messages or activate existing knowledge and skills in other ways, so driver behaviour can be changed in cost-efficient ways