Delivering directional haptic cues through eyeglasses and a seat

Navigation systems usually require visual or auditory attention. Providing the user with haptic cues could potentially decrease cognitive demand in navigation. This study is investigating the use of haptic eyeglasses in navigation. We conducted an experiment comparing directional haptic cues to visual cueing in a car navigation task. Participants (N=12) drove the Lane Change Test simulator with visual text cues, haptic cues given by the eyeglasses and haptic cues given by a car seat. The participants were asked to confirm the recognition of a directional cue (left or right) by pressing an arrow on a tablet screen and by navigating to the corresponding lane. Reaction times and errors were measured. The participants filled in the NASA-TLX questionnaire and were also interviewed about the different cues. The results showed that in comparison to the visual text cues the haptic cues were reacted to significantly faster. Haptic cueing was also evaluated as less frustrating than visual cueing. The haptic eyeglasses fared slightly, although not significantly, better than the haptic seat in subjective and objective evaluations. The paper suggests that haptic eyeglasses can decrease cognitive demand in navigation and have many possible applications.