Positioning study of driver's hands in certain areas of the steering wheel (original) (raw)

Evaluation of four steering wheels to determine driver hand placement in a static environment

Applied Ergonomics, 2014

While much research exists on occupant packaging both proprietary and in the literature, more detailed research regarding user preferences for subjective ratings of steering wheel designs is sparse in published literature. This study aimed to explore the driver interactions with production steering wheels in four vehicles by using anthropometric data, driver hand placement, and driver grip design preferences for Generation-Y and Baby Boomers. In this study, participants selected their preferred grip diameter, responded to a series of questions about the steering wheel grip as they sat in four vehicles, and rank ordered their preferred grip design. Thirty-two male participants (16 Baby Boomers between ages 47 and 65 and 16 Generation-Y between ages 18 and 29) participated in the study. Drivers demonstrated different gripping behavior between vehicles and between groups. Recommendations for future work in steering wheel grip design and naturalistic driver hand positioning are discussed.

Steering-wheel grip force characteristics of drivers as a function of gender, speed, and road condition

This paper presents the results of a steering-wheel grip force study of male and female drivers driving an automobile on two different road conditions (smooth and rough asphalt) at two different speeds (45 mph ¼ 72 km/h and 65 mph ¼ 105 km/h). Thirteen subjects (males and females) participated in this study. The force measurements were made through a custom-made capacitive pressure mapping system wrapped around the steering wheel. Results indicated significantly higher absolute force and net grip force values for the male drivers in comparison to the female drivers. On the other hand, the vehicle speed and the road condition did not significantly affect these response variables. In comparison, the relative value of the driver steering-wheel grip force, expressed as a percentage of the maximum voluntary steering-wheel grip force, and the net relative value of the driving steering-wheel grip force, expressed as a percentage of net maximum voluntary steering-wheel grip force, were not affected significantly by any of the factors. The drivers, on the average, applied their 31% of maximum voluntary steering-wheel grip force, and 21% of net maximum voluntary steering-wheel grip force, intermittently, to the steering wheel, while driving. The capacitive pressure mapping system was found to be a useful method in determining and monitoring the drivers' grip force while driving. Relevance to industry The knowledge of steering-wheel grip force characteristics of the drivers may benefit the automobile designers and manufacturers to improve the quality of their products in terms of comfort and driving performance. This study used a capacitive pressure mapping system in obtaining such information and presented the drivers' grip force characteristics for a sample of drivers.

Gesturing on the Steering Wheel

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, 2014

@hes-so.ch, 2 {firstname.lastname }@unifr.ch ABSTRACT "Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel" is a crucial principle to be taken into account designing interactions for current in-vehicle interfaces. Gesture interaction is a promising modality that can be implemented following this principle in order to reduce driver distraction and increase safety. We present the results of a user elicitation for gestures performed on the surface of the steering wheel. We asked to 40 participants to elicit 6 gestures, for a total of 240 gestures. Based on the results of this experience, we derived a taxonomy of gestures performed on the steering wheel. The analysis of the results offers useful suggestions for the design of in-vehicle gestural interfaces based on this approach.

Gestural interaction on the steering wheel

Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '11, 2011

Cars offer an increasing number of infotainment systems as well as comfort functions that can be controlled by the driver. In our research, we investigate new interaction techniques that aim to make it easier to interact with these systems while driving. We suggest utilizing the steering wheel as an additional interaction surface. In this paper, we present two user studies conducted with a working prototype of a multi-touch steering wheel. In the first, we developed a user-defined steering wheel gesture set, and in the second, we applied the identified gestures and compared their application to conventional user interaction with infotainment systems in terms of driver distraction. The main outcome was that driver's visual demand is reduced significantly by using gestural interaction on the multi-touch steering wheel.

The Comparison Study of Handgrip Pressure on Steering Wheel National Cars / Mohd Hidayat Ab Rahman ...[et al.]

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), 2018

The steering wheel is ergonomically designed to provide optimal comfort to the drivers while grip the steering wheel, especially on the long journey. There are significant design differences between the steering wheel car models. Therefore, the objective of this research are to analyze the data of handgrip pressure towards national cars which is Proton and Perodua. The experiment will be performed by using type 2 (two) cars, Proton Saga and Perodua Myvi. Tekscan Grip System is a system that will be used to perform this analysis. Data of handgrip pressure are collected during driving when the device are installed and connect to the respondents. Selection of the road for this experiment will start at 92.1 KM intersection traffic lights, entering North-South Highway, and will end at Tangkak Toll Exit. During the experiment, all volunteers need to maintain speed in the range of 80-100km / h and most of the time, they have to drive in the left lane unless overtaking other vehicles. Distance from beginning to end is about 68.8km and the time taken is about 30 minutes. Drivers will be driving with the hands on the steering wheel 9 and 3 because it is the safest position to hold the steering wheel. The finding from this study will give a better insight on the effect of steering wheel design to the grip pressure of the driver.

Estimation of Driver’s Danger Level when Accessing the Center Console for Safe Driving

Sensors, 2018

This paper proposes a system for estimating the level of danger when a driver accesses the center console of a vehicle while driving. The proposed system uses a driver monitoring platform to measure the distance between the driver’s hand and the center console during driving, as well as the time taken for the driver to access the center console. Three infrared sensors on the center console are used to detect the movement of the driver’s hand. These sensors are installed in three locations: the air conditioner or heater (temperature control) button, wind direction control button, and wind intensity control button. A driver’s danger level is estimated to be based on a linear regression analysis of the distance and time of movement between the driver’s hand and the center console, as measured in the proposed scenarios. In the experimental results of the proposed scenarios, the root mean square error of driver H using distance and time of movement between the driver’s hand and the cente...

Naturalistic Observations of Drivers' Hand Positions While Driving With and Without Adaptive Cruise Control

2012

Researchers use various measurements (e.g., travelling speed, headway to the vehicle in front) to assess the impact that new traffic/transport measures (e.g., changes to road design, introduction of in-vehicle technologies) might have on road safety and on drivers’ behaviour. In the recent years, the measurement of hand position on the steering wheel was proved to be interesting for the assessment of mental workload and perceived risk, with the clear advantage that the hand position can be easily measured both in a driving simulator and naturalistic driving studies. In order to find out more on the topic, a small scale Field Operational Test (FOT), involving 8 participants, was performed to assess the effect that the usage of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) might have on the chosen drivers’ hand position. Video clips of the first 5 participants, using the vehicle in low demanding driving conditions, with and without the ACC, were selected to allow the comparison between the two experi...

Hand gestures to control infotainment equipment in cars

2014 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium Proceedings, 2014

Controlling multiple devices while driving steals drivers' attention from the road and is becoming the cause of accidents in 1 out of 3 cases. Many research efforts are being dedicated to design, manufacture and test Human-Machine Interfaces that allow operating car devices without distracting the drivers' attention. A complete system for controlling the infotainment equipment through hand gestures is explained in this paper. The system works with a visible-infrared camera mounted on the ceiling of the car and pointing to the shift-stick area, and is based in a combination of some new and some wellknown computer vision algorithms. The system has been tested by 23 volunteers on a car simulator and a real vehicle and the results show that the users slightly prefer this system to an equivalent one based on a touch-screen interface.

Human Computer Inte raction in the Car

2010

Cars have become complex interactive systems. Mechanical controls and electrical systems are transformed to the digital realm. It is common that drivers operate a vehicle and, at the same time, interact with a variety of devices and applications. Texting while driving, looking up an address for the navigation system, and taking a phone call are just some common examples that add value for the driver, but also increase the risk of driving. Novel interaction technologies create many opportunities for designing useful and attractive in-car user interfaces. With technologies that assist the user in driving, such as assistive cruise control and lane keeping, the user interface is essential to the way people perceive the driving experience. New means for user interface development and interaction design are required as the number of factors influencing the design space for automotive user interfaces is increasing. In comparison to other domains, a trial and error approach while the product is already in the market is not acceptable as the cost of failure may be fatal. User interface design in the automotive domain is relevant across many areas ranging from primary driving control, to assisted functions, to navigation, information services, entertainment and games.

Multi-touch steering wheel for in-car tertiary applications using infrared sensors

Proceedings of the 5th Augmented Human International Conference, 2014

This paper proposes a multi-touch steering wheel for in-car tertiary applications. Existing interfaces for in-car applications such as buttons and touch displays have several operating problems. For example, drivers have to consciously move their hands to the interfaces as the interfaces are fixed on specific positions. Therefore, we developed a steering wheel where touch positions can correspond to different operating positions. This system can recognize hand gestures at any position on the steering wheel by utilizing 120 infrared (IR) sensors embedded in it. The sensors are lined up in an array surrounding the whole wheel. An Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm is used to learn and recognize the different gestures through the data obtained from the sensors. The gestures recognized are flick, click, tap, stroke and twist. Additionally, we implemented a navigation application and an audio application that utilizes the torus shape of the steering wheel. We conducted an experiment to observe the possibility of our proposed system to recognize flick gestures at three positions. Results show that an average of 92% of flick could be recognized.