how in-car navigation aids affect driving performance and visual attention

NEC-HFES S tudent Conference11/14/2008

Andrew KunJonathan Oppelaar Zeljko Medenica

Oskar Palinko

University Of New Hampshire

Tim Paek

M icrosoft Research

Introduction

GPS -based personal navigation devices (PND) commonly found in vehicles

M ost PNDs combine audio-visual informationEffect on driving

Addressed Questions S tandard vs. voice-only PNDs:

Difference in driving performance? Difference in time looking at the road?

ExperimentWithin subjects experimentThree navigation aids:

Paper directions, S tandard PND directions, V oice-only directions.

Equipment: high-fidelity driving simulator, eye-tracker, 7” LCD screen

Driving environment: two-lane city road

Check out our simulator video at http://www.tinyurl.com/p54sim

LCD screen: map with route (or odometer)

Eye tracker cameras and IR

illuminator

Rear view “mirror” LCD screen

Camcorder (manual data transcription)

Collected DataDriving performance measures:

Lane position, S teering wheel angle, V elocity.

V ariancesGaze angles - eye-tracker Intersections rejected

Results

ConclusionsDriving performance:

No difference for standard PND vs. voice only Paper directions much worse

Time subjects spent looking at the road: ~94% for voice only ~89% for combined voice and visual

But…M ost participants preferred combined voice

and visual aidHypothesis: subjects need reassurance

Future work: model this behavior and predict when reassurance may be needed

Questions?