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The intuitive grasp interface: design and evaluation of micro-gestures on the steering wheel for driving scenario

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Abstract

Gestural inputs are nowadays widely applied to in-car interactive systems. The emerging sensing technologies allow for micro-gestures that can be achieved with less energy and are performed probably when the driver is grasping the steering wheel, thereby reducing the user attention to human–vehicle interaction. The movability of hands and fingers has to be considered before designing micro-gestures for driving scenarios, thus the newly defined gestures may be utterly different to the familiar multi-touch or body gestures. This paper presents a set of micro-gestures which are designed for intuitively commanding the in-car information system by taking both the gesture meanings and physical limitations into account. The study sets out the results of evaluating the feasibility of gesture sets with its performance in dual-task situation. The learnability and intuitiveness of micro-gestures as well as the effects they have on driving tasks are evaluated, and the effects of different grasping postures on the performance of novice drivers are also compared. It is concluded that the micro-gestures particularly designed for the grasp interface have advantages in multi-tasking, and they are appreciated by users who participated in the evaluation test.

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Notes

  1. If no reaction was detected in the time interval between two stimuli, the first stimulus was a missed signal (false negative). The wrong reactions (false positive) occurred on two situations. First, more than one reactions was detected in the time interval between two stimuli, in this case the reactions that were made later than the first one were regarded as mistakes. Second, if only one reaction was detected, and the fixation did not overlap or get close to the signal on the screen, experimenters judged it to be an unintentional response.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Jungong Road No. 516, Shanghai, 200093, People’s Republic of China

    Yiqi Xiao

  2. Hunan University, South Lushan Road No. 2, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Yiqi Xiao & Renke He

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  1. Yiqi Xiao
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  2. Renke He
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Correspondence to Yiqi Xiao.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The study protocol conforms to the ethnical standard of the institutional committee and to the declaration of ethical principles adopted by the 18th WMA General Assembly, Helsinki, Finland, June 1964 and its later amendments. The Queen Mary Ethics of Research Committee approved the study protocol which includes all procedures performed in this study with the following reference number QMREC1749a.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants involved in the study. This paper does not include any studies with animals conducted by any of the authors.

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Xiao, Y., He, R. The intuitive grasp interface: design and evaluation of micro-gestures on the steering wheel for driving scenario. Univ Access Inf Soc 19, 433–450 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00647-0

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