Optimising landmark-based route guidance for older drivers

In-vehicle navigation systems (IVNS) have the potential to benefit older drivers, reducing stress associated with way-finding and providing on-trip support, especially in unfamiliar locations. However, existing IVNS present challenges to usability, resulting in lack of uptake and over-reliance on pre-trip planning. This paper presents research aimed at identifying features that make IVNS user-friendly and appropriate for older drivers. Studying navigational performance within a simulated driving environment, it focuses on the use of landmarks with route guidance information, and the most appropriate method of information provision (audio only, visual only or a combination of audio and visual). It also assesses potential gender differences that might arise with landmark-based navigational information. Solutions include use of appropriate roadside landmarks, and information delivered through a combination of audio and icon-based visual format. These features result in lower workload and fewer navigational errors. The audio/visual modality reduces the hazard of distraction by landmarks resulting in fewer visual glances and lower glance duration to the roadside compared to other modalities. Design and provision of IVNS tailored to older drivers’ needs can make a considerable contribution to maintaining individual mobility for longer

Evaluation of Haptic Patterns on a Steering Wheel

Infotainment Systems can increase mental workload and divert visual attention away from looking ahead on the roads. When these systems give information to the driver, provide it through the tactile channel on the steering, it wheel might improve driving behaviour and safety. This paper describes an investigation into the perceivability of haptic feedback patterns using an actuated surface on a steering wheel. Six solenoids were embedded along the rim of the steering wheel creating three bumps under each palm. Maximally, four of the six solenoids were actuated simultaneously, resulting in 56 patterns to test. Participants were asked to keep in the middle road of the driving simulator as good as possible. Overall recognition accuracy of the haptic patterns was 81.3%, where identification rate increased with decreasing number of active solenoids (up to 92.2% for a single solenoid). There was no significant increase in lane deviation or steering angle during haptic pattern presentation. These results suggest that drivers can reliably distinguish between cutaneous patterns presented on the steering wheel. Our findings can assist in delivering non-critical messages to the driver (e.g. driving performance, incoming text messages, etc.) without decreasing driving performance or increasing perceived mental workload

Multimodal Shared-Control Interaction for Mobile Robots in AAL Environments

This dissertation investigates the design, development and implementation of cognitively adequate, safe and robust, spatially-related, multimodal interaction between human operators and mobile robots in Ambient Assisted Living environments both from the theoretical and practical perspectives. By focusing on different aspects of the concept Interaction, the essential contribution of this dissertation is divided into three main research packages; namely, Formal Interaction, Spatial Interaction and Multimodal Interaction in AAL. As the principle package, in Formal Interaction, research effort is dedicated to developing a formal language based interaction modelling and management solution process and a unified dialogue modelling approach. This package aims to enable a robust, flexible, and context-sensitive, yet formally controllable and tractable interaction. This type of interaction can be used to support the interaction management of any complex interactive systems, including the ones covered in the other two research packages. In the second research package, Spatial Interaction, a general qualitative spatial knowledge based multi-level conceptual model is developed and proposed. The goal is to support a spatially-related interaction in human-robot collaborative navigation. With a model-based computational framework, the proposed conceptual model has been implemented and integrated into a practical interactive system which has been evaluated by empirical studies. It has been particularly tested with respect to a set of high-level and model-based conceptual strategies for resolving the frequent spatially-related communication problems in human-robot interaction. Last but not least, in Multimodal Interaction in AAL, attention is drawn to design, development and implementation of multimodal interaction for elderly persons. In this elderly-friendly scenario, ageing-related characteristics are carefully considered for an effective and efficient interaction. Moreover, a standard model based empirical framework for evaluating multimodal interaction is provided. This framework was especially applied to evaluate a minutely developed and systematically improved elderly-friendly multimodal interactive system through a series of empirical studies with groups of elderly persons

Investigating older drivers' route guidance requirements to inform the design of future in-vehicle navigation systems

Phd ThesisIn-vehicle navigation has been identified as a key activity for maintaining the mobility and hence the independence and quality of life of older adults. However, few studies have directly investigated and tested route guidance requirements specifically for older drivers. This thesis addresses the knowledge gap using a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies across three investigations. A focus group investigation was undertaken first. Thirty older adults were recruited and themes of driving and navigation behaviour discussed. This research stage found older adults have difficulty planning and then navigating journeys, landmarks are used to navigate the road network and in-vehicle navigation systems (IVNS) are not deemed to be useable. In the second investigation, current design IVNS were loaned to 22 older adults for a two-week period. During this period the participants detailed their experiences and attitudes of the loaned IVNS. In addition, in-depth interviews were undertaken. This investigation found that IVNS have usability issues for older drivers that need to be considered for the next generation of IVNS. In the next stage, a driving simulator investigation with 30 older drivers was carried out. This phase of the research examined the navigational benefits of providing landmark-based route guidance information as compared to the traditional method of paper maps. The study concluded that older drivers have difficulties with navigation through decline in memory and vision. The driving simulator investigation suggests that landmarks are effective at supporting older drivers with the navigation task; in particular, older female drivers. In addition, landmark-based route guidance information should be delivered through a combination of audio instructions and an icon-based visual display. Finally, the thesis outlines recommendations for the next generation IVNS for older drivers

Effects of Driver and Secondary Task Characteristics on Lane Change Test Performance

The main objective of this study was to examine the sensitivity of the Lane Change Test (LCT) as proposed by International Organization of Standardization by evaluating LCT performance between primary and dual‐task conditions in simulated driving conditions. The study involved four different secondary tasks that involved tracking, visual search, memory, and data entry, each under two different difficulty levels. The primary task involved a series of lane changes on a three‐lane straight roadway where the actual lane change trajectory was compared with a normative model of the trajectory. Thus, the lane change performance was measured by the mean deviation of the actual driving trajectory from the normative trajectory. Twenty‐four participants within three age groups (25–34, 35–45, and >55 years) and equally distributed between male and female took part in the study. Thus, the study also investigated the effect of age and gender on driving performance. The results showed that secondary tasks that require visual attention and psychomotor coordination deteriorated driving performance the most, whereas tasks that required memory scanning and utilization of the auditory modality least affected driving performance. The study also found differences in LCT performances with respect to three different age categories and gender. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100276/1/20342_ftp.pd

A Survey of Driving Research Simulators Around the World.

The literature review is part of the EPSRC funded project "Driver performance in the EPSRC driving simulator: a validation study". The aim of the project is to validate this simulator, located at the Department of Psychology, University of Leeds, and thereby to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of the existing configuration. It will provide guidance on how the simulator can be modified and overcome any deficiencies that are detected and also provide "benchmarks" against which other simulators can be compared. The literature review will describe the technical characteristics of the most well-known driving simulators around the world, their special features and their application areas until today. The simulators will be described and compared according to their cost (low, medium and high) and also contact addresses and photographs of the simulators will be provided by the end of the paper. In the process of gathering this information, it became apparent that there are mainly two types of papers published - either in journals or in proceedings from conferences: those describing only the technical characteristics of a specific simulator and those referring only to the applications of a specific simulator. For the first type of papers, the level of detail, format and content varies significantly where for the second one it has been proven extremely difficult to find any information about the technical characteristics of the simulator where the study had been carried out. A number of details provided in this paper are part of personal communication, or personal visits to those particular driving simulator centres or from the World Wide Web. It should also be noted here that most of the researchers contacted here offered very detail technical characteristics and application areas of their driving simulators and the author is grateful to them

A Service Robot for Navigation Assistance and Physical Rehabilitation of Seniors

The population of the advanced countries is ageing, with the direct consequence that an increasing number of people will have to live with sensitive, cognitive and physical disabilities. People with impaired physical ability are not confident to move alone, especially in crowded environment and for long journeys, highly reducing the quality of their life. We propose a new generation of robotic walking assistants whose mechanical and electronic components are conceived to optimize the collaboration between the robot and its users. We will apply these general ideas to investigate the interaction between older adults and a robotic walker, named FriWalk, exploiting it either as a navigational or as a rehabilitation aid. For the use of the FriWalk as a navigation assistance, the system guides the user securing high levels of safety, a perfect compliance with the social rules and non-intrusive interaction between human and machine. To this purpose, we developed several guidance systems ranging from completely passive strategies to active solutions exploiting either the rear or the front motors mounted on the robot. The common strategy at the basis of all the algorithms is that the responsibility of the locomotion belongs always to the user, both to increase the mobility of elder users and to enhance their perception of control over the robot. This way the robot intervenes only whenever it is strictly necessary not to mitigate the user safety. Moreover, the robotic walker has been endowed with a tablet and graphical user interface (GUI) which provides the user with the visual indications about the path to follow. Since the FriWalk was developed to suit the needs of users with different deficits, we conducted extensive human-robot interaction (HRI) experiments with elders, complemented with direct interviews of the participants. As concerns the use of the FriWalk as a rehabilitation aid, force sensing to estimate the torques applied by the user and change the user perceived inertia can be exploited by doctors to let the user feel the device heavier or lighter. Moreover, thanks to a new generation of sensors, the device can be exploited in a clinical context to track the performance of the users' rehabilitation exercises, in order to assist nurses and doctors during the hospitalization of older adults

Testing a Shape-Changing Haptic Navigation Device With Vision-Impaired and Sighted Audiences in an Immersive Theater Setting

Flatland was an immersive “in-the-wild” experimental theater and technology project, undertaken with the goal of developing systems that could assist “real-world” pedestrian navigation for both vision-impaired (VI) and sighted individuals, while also exploring inclusive and equivalent cultural experiences for VI and sighted audiences. A novel shape-changing handheld haptic navigation device, the “Animotus,” was developed. The device has the ability to modify its form in the user's grasp to communicate heading and proximity to navigational targets. Flatland provided a unique opportunity to comparatively study the use of novel navigation devices with a large group of individuals (79 sighted, 15 VI) who were primarily attending a theater production rather than an experimental study. In this paper, we present our findings on comparing the navigation performance (measured in terms of efficiency, average pace, and time facing targets) and opinions of VI and sighted users of the Animotus as they negotiated the 112 m2 production environment. Differences in navigation performance were nonsignificant across VI and sighted individuals and a similar range of opinions on device function and engagement spanned both groups. We believe more structured device familiarization, particularly for VI users, could improve performance and incorrect technology expectations (such as obstacle avoidance capability), which influenced overall opinion. This paper is intended to aid the development of future inclusive technologies and cultural experiences

The cockpit for the 21st century

Interactive surfaces are a growing trend in many domains. As one possible manifestation of Mark Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous and disappearing computers in everywhere objects, we see touchsensitive screens in many kinds of devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers and interactive tabletops. More advanced concepts of these have been an active research topic for many years. This has also influenced automotive cockpit development: concept cars and recent market releases show integrated touchscreens, growing in size. To meet the increasing information and interaction needs, interactive surfaces offer context-dependent functionality in combination with a direct input paradigm. However, interfaces in the car need to be operable while driving. Distraction, especially visual distraction from the driving task, can lead to critical situations if the sum of attentional demand emerging from both primary and secondary task overextends the available resources. So far, a touchscreen requires a lot of visual attention since its flat surface does not provide any haptic feedback. There have been approaches to make direct touch interaction accessible while driving for simple tasks. Outside the automotive domain, for example in office environments, concepts for sophisticated handling of large displays have already been introduced. Moreover, technological advances lead to new characteristics for interactive surfaces by enabling arbitrary surface shapes. In cars, two main characteristics for upcoming interactive surfaces are largeness and shape. On the one hand, spatial extension is not only increasing through larger displays, but also by taking objects in the surrounding into account for interaction. On the other hand, the flatness inherent in current screens can be overcome by upcoming technologies, and interactive surfaces can therefore provide haptically distinguishable surfaces. This thesis describes the systematic exploration of large and shaped interactive surfaces and analyzes their potential for interaction while driving. Therefore, different prototypes for each characteristic have been developed and evaluated in test settings suitable for their maturity level. Those prototypes were used to obtain subjective user feedback and objective data, to investigate effects on driving and glance behavior as well as usability and user experience. As a contribution, this thesis provides an analysis of the development of interactive surfaces in the car. Two characteristics, largeness and shape, are identified that can improve the interaction compared to conventional touchscreens. The presented studies show that large interactive surfaces can provide new and improved ways of interaction both in driver-only and driver-passenger situations. Furthermore, studies indicate a positive effect on visual distraction when additional static haptic feedback is provided by shaped interactive surfaces. Overall, various, non-exclusively applicable, interaction concepts prove the potential of interactive surfaces for the use in automotive cockpits, which is expected to be beneficial also in further environments where visual attention needs to be focused on additional tasks.Der Einsatz von interaktiven Oberflächen weitet sich mehr und mehr auf die unterschiedlichsten Lebensbereiche aus. Damit sind sie eine mögliche Ausprägung von Mark Weisers Vision der allgegenwärtigen Computer, die aus unserer direkten Wahrnehmung verschwinden. Bei einer Vielzahl von technischen Geräten des täglichen Lebens, wie Smartphones, Tablets oder interaktiven Tischen, sind berührungsempfindliche Oberflächen bereits heute in Benutzung. Schon seit vielen Jahren arbeiten Forscher an einer Weiterentwicklung der Technik, um ihre Vorteile auch in anderen Bereichen, wie beispielsweise der Interaktion zwischen Mensch und Automobil, nutzbar zu machen. Und das mit Erfolg: Interaktive Benutzeroberflächen werden mittlerweile serienmäßig in vielen Fahrzeugen eingesetzt. Der Einbau von immer größeren, in das Cockpit integrierten Touchscreens in Konzeptfahrzeuge zeigt, dass sich diese Entwicklung weiter in vollem Gange befindet. Interaktive Oberflächen ermöglichen das flexible Anzeigen von kontextsensitiven Inhalten und machen eine direkte Interaktion mit den Bildschirminhalten möglich. Auf diese Weise erfüllen sie die sich wandelnden Informations- und Interaktionsbedürfnisse in besonderem Maße. Beim Einsatz von Bedienschnittstellen im Fahrzeug ist die gefahrlose Benutzbarkeit während der Fahrt von besonderer Bedeutung. Insbesondere visuelle Ablenkung von der Fahraufgabe kann zu kritischen Situationen führen, wenn Primär- und Sekundäraufgaben mehr als die insgesamt verfügbare Aufmerksamkeit des Fahrers beanspruchen. Herkömmliche Touchscreens stellen dem Fahrer bisher lediglich eine flache Oberfläche bereit, die keinerlei haptische Rückmeldung bietet, weshalb deren Bedienung besonders viel visuelle Aufmerksamkeit erfordert. Verschiedene Ansätze ermöglichen dem Fahrer, direkte Touchinteraktion für einfache Aufgaben während der Fahrt zu nutzen. Außerhalb der Automobilindustrie, zum Beispiel für Büroarbeitsplätze, wurden bereits verschiedene Konzepte für eine komplexere Bedienung großer Bildschirme vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus führt der technologische Fortschritt zu neuen möglichen Ausprägungen interaktiver Oberflächen und erlaubt, diese beliebig zu formen. Für die nächste Generation von interaktiven Oberflächen im Fahrzeug wird vor allem an der Modifikation der Kategorien Größe und Form gearbeitet. Die Bedienschnittstelle wird nicht nur durch größere Bildschirme erweitert, sondern auch dadurch, dass Objekte wie Dekorleisten in die Interaktion einbezogen werden können. Andererseits heben aktuelle Technologieentwicklungen die Restriktion auf flache Oberflächen auf, so dass Touchscreens künftig ertastbare Strukturen aufweisen können. Diese Dissertation beschreibt die systematische Untersuchung großer und nicht-flacher interaktiver Oberflächen und analysiert ihr Potential für die Interaktion während der Fahrt. Dazu wurden für jede Charakteristik verschiedene Prototypen entwickelt und in Testumgebungen entsprechend ihres Reifegrads evaluiert. Auf diese Weise konnten subjektives Nutzerfeedback und objektive Daten erhoben, und die Effekte auf Fahr- und Blickverhalten sowie Nutzbarkeit untersucht werden. Diese Dissertation leistet den Beitrag einer Analyse der Entwicklung von interaktiven Oberflächen im Automobilbereich. Weiterhin werden die Aspekte Größe und Form untersucht, um mit ihrer Hilfe die Interaktion im Vergleich zu herkömmlichen Touchscreens zu verbessern. Die durchgeführten Studien belegen, dass große Flächen neue und verbesserte Bedienmöglichkeiten bieten können. Außerdem zeigt sich ein positiver Effekt auf die visuelle Ablenkung, wenn zusätzliches statisches, haptisches Feedback durch nicht-flache Oberflächen bereitgestellt wird. Zusammenfassend zeigen verschiedene, untereinander kombinierbare Interaktionskonzepte das Potential interaktiver Oberflächen für den automotiven Einsatz. Zudem können die Ergebnisse auch in anderen Bereichen Anwendung finden, in denen visuelle Aufmerksamkeit für andere Aufgaben benötigt wird