Influence of Inattentively Perceived Auditory Stimulation on Driving Performance

Rapid technological advancements in recent years have brought up a lot of driving assistance systems of various types. While most of these systems, such as ABS, ESP, etc., automatically work in the background, there exist also a class of assistance systems that aim at directly supporting or influencing the driver in his different tasks, for example by trying to change its driving behavior. The primary objective of this work is to deeply investigate the potential of behavior changing auditory interfaces in different driving settings (speed limits at different levels, different driving scenarios & conditions, etc.). Particular attention is directed towards the power of auditory cues that are inattentively (or unconsciously) perceived by the driver, and that result in increased road safety or a more efficient style of driving (regarding economic measures such as fuel consumption or CO2 emissions). Our expectations for the workshop, in order to come closer to our target, are to discuss the general feasibility of our approach/experimental setting and in more details questions like the types of sounds to use (i.e., artificial vs. natural), how to generate realistic engine sound/ambient noise, which type of music (style; title/interpret) to use to induce certain states of mood at the driver and last but not least to find partners for cooperation in the design of the auditory interface.