Publication

There has been an increasing interest for in-vehicle interfaces that make use of haptic information. A simulator study was conducted to investigate whether haptic information can facilitate the interaction with an interface while driving. The conceptual in-car interface consisted of a visual menu of four textures displayed on a screen and corresponding haptic information displayed through the interaction device – a rotary device. The experimental conditions included either visual or haptic or both visual and haptic information. One advantage of the condition including only haptic information was that the participants’ eyes remained on the road during the interaction. However, since the haptic interaction necessitated serial processing, the experimental task took longer when using only haptic information. Therefore the participants seem to have relied more on the visual information when it was available. The degradation in driving performance and mental workload assessment did not differ between the conditions.