Supporting route guidance of car drivers with a tactile display on urban roads

Visual and auditory displays complement each other in presenting turn-by-turn route information in conventional car navigation systems, but may results in driver’s distraction from the primary driving task. In this thesis, we present a tactile car navigation system, which displays turn-by-turn instructions with a vibro-tactile waist belt exploiting a “free” sensory channel. We investigated different tactile parameters such as intensity, duration, and rhythm and designed information presentations for different types of crossings along the route. In different evaluations on urban roads we compared our tactile design with existing car navigation systems measuring performance and cognitive workload of the driver.