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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Comput. Sci.
Sec. Human-Media Interaction
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcomp.2024.1455201

Knuckles Notifications: Mid-air Haptic Feedback on the Dorsal Hand for Hands-on-the-Wheel Driving

Provisionally accepted
Roberto Montano Roberto Montano 1Rafael Morales Rafael Morales 2Dario Pittera Dario Pittera 1William Frier William Frier 1Orestis Georgiou Orestis Georgiou 1Patricia Cornelio Patricia Cornelio 1*
  • 1 Ultraleap Ltd., Bristol, United Kingdom
  • 2 Idener (Spain), Seville, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Ultrasound-based mid-air haptic feedback has been demonstrated to be an effective way to receive in-vehicle information while reducing the driver's distraction. An important feature in communication between a driver and a car is receiving notifications (e.g., a warning alert).However, current configurations are not suitable for receiving notifications (haptic device on the centre console requiring palmar feedback) as they force the driver to take their hands offthe-wheel and eyes off-the-road. In this paper, we propose "knuckles notifications", a novel system that provides mid-air haptic notifications on the driver's dorsal hand while holding the steering wheel. We conducted a series of exploratory studies with engineers and UX designers to understand the perceptual space of the dorsal hand and design sensations associated with 4 in-car notifications (incoming call, incoming text message, navigation alert and driver assistant warning). We evaluated our system with driver participants and demonstrated that knuckles notifications were easily recognised ( 94% success rate) while not affecting the driving task, and mid-air sensations were not masked by background vibration simulating the car movement.

    Keywords: Mid-air haptics, Automotive, Notification, Dorsal hand, driving

    Received: 26 Jun 2024; Accepted: 27 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Montano, Morales, Pittera, Frier, Georgiou and Cornelio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Patricia Cornelio, Ultraleap Ltd., Bristol, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.