Taking into account the importance of visual attention during the driving task mentioned in the previously mentioned studies (see 1.1), one of the objectives of this work was reduce the number of times the driver takes their eyes off the road, as well as the time total that you are not looking at it during the primary task of driving. For monitor this parameter, a small automated program was implemented, which makes use of the functionality of the GazePointer software to track the gaze of each participant. This software provides a continuous stream of coordinates to where the user is looking at, which made it easy to implement a program that checks whether or not those coordinates belong to the screen area. Given that the simulator LCT occupies the entire area of the screen, the act of looking away from the screen is associated with the equivalent of looking away from the road, so it is sufficient to record when, and why how long does the user make these detours.
Currently, most car manufacturers incorporate a touch screen in the your vehicle’s infotainment system. Unlike traditional interfaces, composed of physical and tangible controls, such as buttons, touch screens do not allow receive haptic feedback on the placement, shape, or other characteristics of the controls. This means that interaction with these devices requires the user’s visual attention. user. Since driving is mainly a visual task, it appears that the use of of these modern systems leads to increased driver distraction and, consequently, the risk of an accident or near-accident. To solve these disadvantages, this work aimed to create a innovative system that allows interaction with the touch screen of an infotainment system modern in a more intuitive way and with less dependence on visual attention than user. To this end, a system consisting of two modules was designed and developed. – a module responsible for interacting with the touch screen, and a module responsible for provide haptic feedback to the user. The first module consists of a hand tracking that allows you to translate the gesture of pointing at the screen into a position discreet, allowing to provide feedback to the user before performing the touch. The second module consists of a set of haptic actuators mounted on the steering wheel, where the driver sits on his left hand. This module allows you to transmit information relevant in the form of vibration patterns. The modules were developed independently and integrated into the final system after necessary iterations. The system was evaluated through a set of common tasks performed in the infotainment systems, and was compared to traditional interaction with these systems, without any kind of haptic feedback or unusual interaction method. were registered relevant metrics such as number of off-road visual deviations, duration total of these deviations, deviation in driving, and subjective workload. The system met expectations, leading to an improvement in several of the metrics recorded, and did not worsen driving quality or subjective workload, despite introducing feedback and a new interaction technique
https://digituma.uma.pt/bitstream/10400.13/3108/1/disserta%C3%A7%C3%A3oMarcoLima.pdf