Developing novel multimodal interaction techniques for touchscreen in-vehicle infotainment systems

Haptics has been an integral part of multimodal systems in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The ability to touch and sense virtual components of any system has long been the holy grail of HCI, which is particularly useful in mission critical environments where other modalities are weakened by environmental noise. Haptics also compliments most modalities of interaction by reinforcing the intimate and personal aspect of interaction. Haptics becomes much more important in environments that prove to be far too noisy for audio feedback.The driving environment is one such area, which the addition of haptics is not just additive, but critical in HCI. However, most of the research on haptic feedback in the car has been conducted using vibro-tactile feedback. In this paper, we present a system in which we have developed a novel haptic feedback environment using pneumatic and vibrotactile technologies, to facilitate in carcommunication, using the In-vehicle Infotainment System. Our aim was to build on the user haptic perception and experience the advance multimodal interaction system by utilizing available feedback techniques in, in-car interaction. The qualitative results of our study show that haptic feedback has great potential for safety and communication use, but the difficulty in interpreting haptic signals requires additional translation means (‘semantic linkages’), to support the right interpretation of the haptic information.