Empirical investigation of transferring cockpit interactions from virtual to real-life environments

Abstract

Human-cockpit interaction is an innovative and promising field of automotive research. Indeed, automakers need to ensure safety and user satisfaction for their cockpit development concepts, if driving and interacting occurs simultaneously. One suggested approach is to evaluate simple cockpit prototypes within virtual test environments. Hybrid prototyping allows a more realistic experience with the prototype in early stages of development. With our research study we focused on important basic parameters within hybrid test environments (e.g. shutter glasses and virtual projected car model) and evaluated their potential of influence. There are no hints to assume that shutter glasses influence user behaviour. Interestingly, we found significant faster task completion times within a virtual projected car model, which indicate that immersive environments increase user performances. In summary, we can suggest hybrid prototyping within immersive test environments for evaluating human-cockpit interactions. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.