Sensory Perception & Interaction, Research Group

Sensory overloaded environments present an opportunity for
innovative design in the area of Human-Machine Interaction. In
this paper we study the usefulness of a tactile display in the
automobile environment. Our approach uses a simple pneumatic
pump to produce pulsations of varying frequencies on the driver’s
hands through a car steering wheel fitted with inflatable pads.
The goal of the project is to evaluate the effectiveness of such a
system in alerting the driver of a possible problem, when it is used
to augment the visual display presently used in automobiles. A
steering wheel that provides haptic feedback using pneumatic
pockets was developed to test our hypothesis. The steering wheel
can pulsate at different frequencies. The system was tested in a
simple multitasking paradigm on several subjects and their
reaction times to different stimuli were measured and analyzed.
For these experiments, we found that using a tactile feedback
device lowers reaction time significantly and that modulating
frequency of vibration provides extra information that can reduce
the time necessary to identify a problem.