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Information on a windshield display at different distances to the driver: (1) on the windshield, (2) in front of it
Source publication
Windshield displays (WSDs) are information displays covering the entire windshield. Current WSD test setups place information at different distances, but always within the driver's foveal field of view. We built two WSD test setups, which present information not only at various distances within the driver's visual focus, but also in the peripheral...
Citations
... These technologies seek to prevent distractions while driving, using elements such as automotive instrument clusters, HUDs, head-down displays, and others [1,2]. The HUD system is a device that situates information within the driver's view through the windshield; then, the primary advantage of a HUD lies in presenting relevant information inside the driver's visual field, reducing distractions, and minimizing gaze diversion to a minimum [3,4]. However, this benefit could be attenuated by implementing HUD interfaces that produce an uncomfortable user experience. ...
Designing automotive Head-Up Displays (HUD) interfaces requires careful consideration of visual guidelines to ensure safety. While specific safety guidelines exist, a general set of visual guidelines has not yet been established. Therefore, this research presents a comprehensive methodology to derive overall visual guidelines designed to project warnings on HUD interfaces. To this end, the present work focused on asking 20 test subjects for driving in various scenarios, while visual stimuli were projected on a specific HUD system, identifying drivers’ behavior patterns and reaction trends. These visual stimuli were based on already tested visual guidelines. The results obtained from this methodology show that it is possible to integrate all previous qualitative and quantitative visual guidelines, allowing for drivers faster reactions and better recognition of warnings. This integration enables determining the most and the least suitable way for presenting information in a specific HUD system concerning identification mistakes and reaction times. Moreover, these findings imply the feasibility of anticipating a driver’s comprehension of warnings in HUD interfaces.
... Therefore, researchers have been working on Windshield Display (WSD), which extends the display area to the entire windshield [35][36][37]. WSDs allow drivers to use the windshield as an interaction surface or display, covering a large field of view (FOV) area [38]. It can also increase driving safety [39] and trust [40] because drivers do not have to change their gaze from the external environment to obtain information while driving. ...
... It can also increase driving safety [39] and trust [40] because drivers do not have to change their gaze from the external environment to obtain information while driving. In addition, focusing on objects at different distances requires less effort between the real scene and virtual AR compared to HUDs [38]. Schartmuller et al. [15] conducted a user study and found a higher preference for WSD over HDD when performing work-related tasks. ...
In recent years, automobiles have introduced various infotainment systems for drivers and passengers, providing a high-tech interactive space. While the focus has been on head-up display (HUD)-oriented services for the driver, advances in autonomous driving technology are increasingly driving research into improving the experience for non-driver passengers. However, HUD systems for passengers are limited, and few studies have empirically evaluated their effectiveness or preferences. In this paper, we propose a novel infotainment system for passengers in moving vehicles, the Full-window Augmented Reality System (FARS), and empirically verify its impact on passengers’ spatial perception and riding experience. The FARS is implemented in a real vehicle using a short-throw projector and a transparent AR film to create an AR display on the entire right window of the passenger seat. To explore the impact of FARS on users’ spatial knowledge and preferences, we further conducted a user study comparing the difference between FARS and the Seat Back Display (SBD), commonly used in passenger mobility services. The results suggest that the FARS is a valuable infotainment system for passengers and has advantages in memorizing the features or locations of specific environments outside the vehicle while enhancing the user’s travel experience.
... § e-mail: andreas.riener@thi.de these studies on AR HUDs/WSDs was to address the need for front view displays that minimize driver distraction [3,7,10,22,24]. ...
... As modern cars with Augmented Reality (AR) Head-up Displays (HUDs) have entered the market [8], more and more drivers are experiencing interactions with AR technology. Although nowaday's AR HUDs mainly provide driving-related information to support the driver [4][5][6]10], recent studies have investigated the interaction with non-driving tasks and which tasks passengers would like to interact with while traveling in automated vehicles (AVs) [3,12,13]. Pfleging et al. [12], for example, concluded that in higher automation levels (SAE Level 3-5) (driver-)passengers would want to listen to music (or other audible content), talk with passengers, surf online, use mobile communication (texting, calling) and social media; they would also prefer not to perform any tasks.Riegler et al. [13] provided implications and recommendations for the use of 3D windshield displays (WSDs) in SAE Level 3 (conditionally automated) vehicles based on a user study conducted in virtual reality. ...
... On average, participants placed four content windows. The number of contents influences the reaction time of users [11] and studies found that a fewer number of information (3 to 6) at a time is needed for faster reaction times and good task performance [6]. Riegler et al. [13] referred that the task performance with one single content window was better, though their participants preferred to use multiple content windows at a time. ...
... For this reason, there have been an increasing number of mid-air gesture applications in the automotive field. Rümelin et al. [8] have shown that pointing as a lightweight form of gestural interaction is reliable, achieving a recognition rate of 96% in the lab. Ohn-Bar [9] presented hand gestures to steer infotainment systems. ...
With the rapid advancement of autonomous vehicles, a transformative transportation paradigm is emerging in the automotive industry, necessitating a re-evaluation of how users engage with and utilize these evolving settings. This research paper introduces an innovative interaction system tailored for shared autonomous vehicles, focusing on its development and comprehensive evaluation. The proposed system uses the car’s windshield as an interactive display surface, enabling infotainment and real-time information about the surrounding environment. The integration of two gesture-based interfaces forms a central component of the system. Through a study involving twenty subjects, we analyzed and compared the user experience facilitated by these interfaces. The study outcomes demonstrated that the subjects exhibited similar behaviors and responses across both interfaces, thus validating the potential of these interaction systems for future autonomous vehicles. These findings collectively emphasize the transformative nature of the proposed system and its ability to enhance user engagement and interaction within the context of autonomous transportation.
... In recent years, heads-up displays (HUDs) have also been used to project useful driving related information like speed and navigation instructions on a small part of the windshield. Augmented reality (AR) windshield display (WSD) transforms the windshield of a car into transparent display by superimposing information over the driving scene [25,66]. WSDs offer promising ways to display both driving related information (e.g. ...
... The use of HUDs also seems to increase the overall quality of driving, including staying in traffic signs, and improving the flow of driving and navigation skills. Navigation information is also transmitted to the windscreen, so the driver does not have to watch the audio panel, which is usually out of the driver's view, and the driver must look away from the road to view the navigation information [4], [5]. The Head-Up Display is a solution to reduce the time and frequency when drivers look away from the traffic scene [6]. ...
Previously, car windshields served as a barrier against the wind or to prevent the driver from flying outside the vehicle in a collision. The windshield is therefore laminated and consists of two glasses and an intermediate layer consisting of the so-called polyvinyl butyral foil. The latest trend in car windshields is to consider the windshield as a display and project key information onto the windshield. Such glasses are called head-up displays. Various information such as car speed or route can be projected. The driver thus constantly maintains contact with the road, which increases driving safety. Head-Up Display quality is key to display information correctly without negative effects. Such a negative effect is if the displayed information is duplicated, which is called ghosting or double-image. This effect is undesirable and ranks first among the defects we detect in Head-Up Displays. The aim of this article is to compare different production technologies with a focus on the quality of HUD projection and on the double-image occurrence. The production technology enabling optimal HUD image quality is discussed as well. The article deals with a summary of HUD production technologies, focusing on the most common defect that occurs in HUD windshields and which reduce the overall quality of the product. The article evaluates and summarizes the key findings from the perspective of the end customer, but also in terms of the production process. For the driver, as an end customer, it is a source of information according to which he can orient himself in the offer of car equipment. It can be useful for production or development people in terms of processability and process costs. At the same time, the benefits and negatives of using windshields with a Head-Up Display are discussed.
... Head-up displays (HUDs) visualize information in the drivers' field of view towards the outside road environment which provides the benefit of quickly retrieving information while observing the road [18,37]. Going further, windshield displays (WSDs) provide an even larger view and interaction space as they extend HUDs to the entire windscreen, thereby making this display type usable for displaying world-fixed navigation information [15], visualizing nearby points of interest (POIs) [21], and engaging in work, entertainment, and social interaction activites [44], among others. A further potential of WSDs is to enhance user trust by increasing system transparency in AVs [60]. ...
Increasing vehicle automation presents challenges as drivers of automated vehicles become more disengaged from the primary driving task, as there will still be activities that require interfaces for vehicle-passenger interactions. Windshield displays provide large-content areas supporting drivers in non-driving related tasks. This work addresses user preferences as well as task and safety aspects for 3D augmented reality (AR) windshield displays in automated driving. Participants of a user study (N = 24) were presented with two modes of content presentation (multiple content-specific windows vs. one main window), and could freely choose their preferred positions, content types, as well as size, and transparency levels for these content windows using a simulated "ideal" windshield display in a virtual reality driving simulator. We found that using one main content window resulted in better task performance and lower takeover times, however, subjective user experience was higher for the multi-window user interface. These insights help designers of in-vehicle applications to provide a rich user experience in automated vehicles.
... First, multi-modal cues (visual, audio, and tactile [47], [66]) could ease the driver's cognitive load and improve driving performance when the driver's attention primarily focuses on the road [67]. Second, we could evaluate the placement of certain visual contents (e.g., focal vs. peripheral placement [68], [69]) to determine the optimal positioning for driving performance. Finally, our system focuses on fast information filtering and it relies on reasonable heuristics (e.g., objects physically closer to the vehicle are more informative) to determine the informativeness of any specific object near the vehicle in near real-time. ...
Connected vehicles, whether equipped with advanced driver-assistance systems or fully autonomous, require human driver supervision and are currently constrained to visual information in their line-of-sight. A cooperative perception system among vehicles increases their situational awareness by extending their perception range. Existing solutions focus on improving perspective transformation and fast information collection. However, such solutions fail to filter out large amounts of less relevant data and thus impose significant network and computation load. Moreover, presenting all this less relevant data can overwhelm the driver and thus actually hinder them. To address such issues, we present Augmented Informative Cooperative Perception (AICP), the first fast-filtering system which optimizes the informativeness of shared data at vehicles to improve the fused presentation.
To this end, an informativeness maximization problem is presented for vehicles to select a subset of data to display to their drivers. Specifically, we propose (i) a dedicated system design with custom data structure and lightweight routing protocol for convenient data encapsulation, fast interpretation and transmission, and (ii) a comprehensive problem formulation and efficient fitness-based sorting algorithm to select the most valuable data to display at the application layer. We implement a proof-of-concept prototype of AICP with a bandwidth-hungry, latency-constrained real-life augmented reality application. The prototype adds only 12.6 milliseconds of latency to a current informativeness-unaware system. Next, we test the networking performance of AICP at scale and show that AICP effectively filters out less relevant packets and decreases the channel busy time.
... Head-up displays (HUDs) visualize information in the drivers' field of view towards the outside road environment, and thereby enable the driver to quickly check information while observing the road (Haeuslschmid et al., 2016a;Riegler et al., 2019c). Beyond that, windshield displays (WSDs) extend HUDs to the entire windscreen, providing an even larger viewing and interaction area, thereby making this display type suitable for visualizing world-fixed navigation information (Fu et al., 2013), presenting nearby points of interest (POIs) (Häuslschmid et al., 2015), and enabling in-vehicle work, entertainment, and social interaction activities (Riegler et al., 2018), among others. Another potential of WSDs is to improve user trust and acceptance in AVs by increasing their system transparency (Wintersberger et al., 2017b). ...
As vehicle automation advances, drivers of automated vehicles become more disengaged from the primary driving task. Windshield displays provide a large screen space supporting drivers in non-driving related activities. This article presents user preferences as well as task and safety issues for 3D augmented reality windshield displays in automated driving. Participants of a user study ( n = 24) customized two modes of content presentation (multiple content-specific windows vs. one main window), and could freely adjust visual parameters for these content windows using a simulated “ideal” windshield display in a virtual reality driving simulator. We found that user preferences differ with respect to contextual aspects. Additionally, using one main content window resulted in better task performance and lower take-over times, but the subjective user experience was higher for the multi-window user interface. These findings help automotive interface designers to improve experiences in automated vehicles.
