Konferenzbeitrag
Mid-Air Haptic Cues for Safety-Critical Communication: (Re-)Exploring Air-Vortex Rings in Human-Machine Interaction
Vorschaubild nicht verfügbar
Volltext URI
Dokumententyp
Text/Conference Paper
Zusatzinformation
Datum
2022
Zeitschriftentitel
ISSN der Zeitschrift
Bandtitel
Verlag
ACM
Zusammenfassung
In safety-critical human-machine interaction the allocation of users’ attention and the communication of key system information is crucial. Haptic feedback is a promising addition to visual and audio feedback as the latter communication channels are often heavily used in human-machine interaction. Mid-air haptic (MAH) feedback systems have shown to increase immersion, improve the usability of gesture-based interactions and thus might be beneficial for communicating system information in safety-critical environments. Ultrasound feedback systems are at the focus of current research as they deliver high resolution and instantaneous feedback. They come with two major drawbacks: limited interaction space and weak feedback intensity. Although having a lower resolution, feedback systems providing MAH feedback via air vortex rings promise to be better suited for interaction scenarios that require adaptive interaction spaces and high feedback intensities. In this paper, we explore air vortex rings as an alternative to ultrasound-based MAH feedback systems for communicating critical information. We present a vortex generator design that provides a wide interaction space and enables more complex feedback design. We evaluated MAH feedback within a user study (N = 21) using an integrated dual-task design within take-over requests in autonomous driving scenarios. Reaction time was measured to quantify objective performance. Participants further rated the subjective perceivability of the haptic feedback. We observed similar objective performance of vortex rings compared to ultrasound, visual and audio feedback. Qualitative data shows mixed results: feedback via vortex rings felt more intrusive and in part unpleasant to participants but was perceived to have a higher intensity. An expert workshop was conducted to gain insights on feedback design for vortex ring systems and to identify further application areas and research goals.