Preliminary User Studies on Tactile Interface for Telematics Services

Nowadays, an amount of information to driver for his/her safety or entertainment is increasing in telematics services. The majority of drivers depends on visual and auditory information when they use telematics devices. There exist, however, several critical weak points in these modes. Visual information may cause traffic accidents by dispersing his/her field-of-view. Auditory information may not be conveyed because of radio music, engine noise, or conversation noise. Information delivery by tactile interfaces can help drivers overcome some of those defects. In this paper, vibrotactile information is evaluated. We measure the driver´s field-of-view and ECG (electrocardiogram) and analyze potential danger factors that can influence driver´s safe behavior. From this preliminary test, we found out that too many media channels increase drive´s stress, and auditory information leads a driver to lower stress than visual information when the auditory and visual information are combined with tactile information.