Sunday, November 4, 2007

Preserving attention in a car

You could use an eye tracker in a car to avoid drawing the driver's attention to the wrong places.

Click the image to watch the animation

Digital speed representation has the drawback (compared to an analog meter) that the information tend to flicker every time it updates. This can draw the eye from the road to the speedometer, which is bad for driving performance. But if you put an eye tracker in the car, the information will only need to be updated when you look at it.

The same thing applies to tickers and other user interfaces that can be made less distracting while the driver is not looking at them.

Of course, this will have to be tested to see if it works. Does anyone know of any previous research in this field?

1 comment:

Jonas Karlsson said...

I think Volvo Technology have been working with eye tracking for quite some time, to detect the driver awareness. I don't know any details about the project though.