Beyond alerting: Informative tactile, auditory, and multisensory warning signals for safer driving

2009年，仅在英国就有超过2.6万人死于或重伤于交通事故。在大多数案件中，“司机失误/反应”被认为是最重要的促成因素。近年来，驾驶员辅助系统的发展引起了人们的极大兴趣，特别是碰撞警告，当碰撞迫在眉睫时，它向驾驶员发出信号。这些系统具有提供低成本解决方案的潜力，以减少英国和世界各地与驾驶事故相关的大量生命损失、严重伤害和经济成本。这项拟议的研究的目标是开发通过触觉和听觉传递的信息性警告信号。信息性警告信号的优点在于，它们既可以用来将驾驶员的注意力转移到潜在碰撞的位置上，也可以提供一些关于碰撞事件的有用信息，如紧急程度。此外，可以修改信息性警告信号，以便在危险的路况(例如，雪或冰)时更早地提醒司机。在拟议的工作中，将通过开发一系列信号来创建信息性的触觉和听觉警告，对于这些信号，信号的物理特征(即其强度、大小和/或位置)将作为预期碰撞时间和危险方向的函数而改变。这些信号将使用一系列基本的注意力/反应时间实验和这些早期研究中确定的最佳信号进行评估，随后将在驾驶模拟器中进行研究。最终的信号设计将使用高保真驾驶模拟器和不同的司机群体进行验证。希望这项研究将有助于提高驾驶安全，并扩大我们对触摸和听觉感官中的动态信息的理解。

In 2009, more than 26,000 people were killed or seriously injured in driving accidents in the UK alone. "Driver error/reaction" was cited as the most important contributing factor in the majority of cases. In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in the development of driver assistance systems, in particular collision warnings which present a signal to the driver when a collision is imminent. These systems hold the potential of presenting a low-cost solution to reducing the substantial loss of life, serious injuries, and financial costs associated with driving accidents in the UK and worldwide. The goal of the proposed research is to develop informative warnings signals delivered through the senses of touch and audition. Informative warning signals have the advantage that they can be used to both shift a driver's attention to the location of the potential collision and provide some useful information about the collision event such as the level of urgency. Furthermore, informative warnings signals can be modified to alert drivers earlier in dangerous road conditions (e.g., snow or ice). In the proposed work, informative tactile and auditory warnings will be created by developing a series of signals for which the physical characteristics of the signal (i.e., its intensity, size, and/or position) will change as a function of the anticipated time to collision, and direction of danger. These signals will be evaluated using a series of basic attention/reaction time experiments and the best signals identified in these early studies followed up by studies conducted in a driving simulator. The final signal designs will be validated using a high-fidelity driving simulator and a diverse population of drivers. It is hoped that this research will help to both improve driving safety and expand our understanding of dynamic information in the senses of touch and audition.