EAGER: Enhancing Mobile Device Users' Levels of Situational Awareness through Tactile Feedback

在这个项目中，PI将探索一种新的方法，允许个人在从事眼睛被占用的任务时监控他们更广泛的环境中的潜在障碍和威胁。具体地说，他将专注于移动设备用户，他们经常在移动时执行对视觉要求很高的任务，例如撰写和阅读文本消息，因此他们可能无法注意到行人、接近的车辆交通或其他有风险遇到的物体的存在。PI的方法是通过头盔接口提供触觉反馈，以传达存在障碍物的信息。虽然态势感知技术被设计为帮助非卧床用户，但警报通常是使用视觉或听觉反馈来呈现的。但是，如果用户正在进行移动任务，则可能花费宝贵的时间来识别图形指示器的存在，而听觉警报可能被环境声音所掩盖，以表明用户错过了重要提示。PI认为，当用户的其他感官受阻或受到限制时，触觉反馈提供了相当大的优势，还有一个额外的好处，即触觉警报可以谨慎地呈现，而不会引起其他人的注意。为了检验这些假设，PI将进行一系列研究，以确定是否有可能设计出有效地支持用户知情决定的触觉提示。项目成果将包括使用物体识别和基于传感器的技术来跟踪用户附近的障碍物来设计头盔界面原型，以及创新的触觉界面设计指南。更广泛的影响：这项研究将促进我们对移动设备用户情景感知相关问题的理解，也将有助于了解如何向头部位置(这一领域仍处于初级阶段)呈现触觉反馈。开发一个触觉图标库来传达诸如障碍的数量、它们的位置以及它们与用户的接近程度等概念，将在不同的领域得到应用。

In this project the PI will explore a novel approach to allowing individuals to monitor their wider environment for potential obstacles and threats while engaged in a task where the eyes are occupied. Specifically, he will focus on mobile device users, who often perform visually-demanding tasks such as composing and reading text messages while ambulatory, so that they may fail to notice the presence of pedestrians, approaching vehicular traffic or other objects which they are at risk of encountering. The PI's approach is to present tactile feedback via a head-mounted interface in order to communicate the presence of obstacles. While situational awareness technologies have been designed to assist ambulatory users, alerts are often presented using visual or auditory feedback. But if the user is engaged with a mobile task precious time may be taken to identify the presence of graphical indicators, whereas auditory alerts may be masked by environmental sounds to that the user misses vital cues. The PI argues that tactile feedback offers considerable advantages when the user's other senses are blocked or restricted, and there is the additional benefit that tactile alerts can be presented discreetly without drawing attention by others. To test these hypotheses, the PI will conduct a sequence of studies to determine whether it is possible to design tactile cues that are effective in supporting informed decisions by the user. Project outcomes will include design of a head-mounted interface prototype using object-recognition and sensor-based technologies to track obstacles in the user's vicinity, along with innovative tactile interface design guidelines. Broader Impacts: This research will advance our understanding of issues relating to situational awareness among mobile device users, and it will also contribute to the body of knowledge on presenting tactile feedback to locations on the head (a field still in its infancy). The development of a library of tactile icons to convey concepts such as the number of obstacles, their location, and their proximity to the user, will have application across diverse domains.