Guiding a driver's visual attention using graphical and auditory animations

Abstract

This contribution presents our work towards a system that autonomously guides the user's visual attention on important information (e.g., traffic situation or in-car system status signal, etc.) in error prone situations while driving a car. Therefore we use a highly accurate head-mounted eye-tracking system to estimate the driver's current focus of visual attention. Based on this data, we present our strategies to guide the driver's attention to where he should focus his attention. These strategies use both graphical animations in form of a guiding point on the Graphical User Interface as well as auditory animation that are present via headphones using a Virtual Acoustics system. In the end of this contribution, we present the results from a usability study. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.