Sensor-Actuator Supported Implicit Interaction in Driver Assistance Systems

Advances in microelectronics and embedded systems technology have accelerated the evolution of Driver Assistance Systems towards more driving safety, comfort, entertainment and wayfinding. The technological and qualitative progress, however, results in a steadily rising of interaction complexity, information overload, and intricate interface designs. Assessing interaction designs for in-car assistance services is an emerging and vibrant field of research. In this work, implicit interaction in Driver-Vehicle Interfaces is introduced for the purpose of relieving the driver from cognitive overload situations. Today’s mostly used sensory modalities vision (seeing) and hearing are very often highly charged due to a larger number and complexity of (i) Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and/or In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS), (ii) infotainment devices, (iii) communication appliances, and others. These systems have originally been developed for providing support to the vehicle driver, but unfortunately their operation and monitoring increasingly has the drawback of resulting in a high cognitive load for the driving person and consequently directs to operation errors, caused by (i) overlooking information or (ii) missing important messages. Another class of problems are modalitybased distraction factors, such as glaring or reflecting light, fog, snowfall, day and night vision and changing light conditions for the visual channel, or motor and traffic noise, passenger communication and cell phone calls, car stereo, etc. for the auditory notification channel. Beside these communication restrictions, possible solutions for above mentioned problems have been investigated and three suitable options have been identified: (i) the introduction of one or more additional feedback channels (a feedback channel in this context is a dedicated way for the driver to interact with the vehicle), (ii) the optimization of existing feedback modalities ...