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Driving a car is a very tactile experience, whether its gripping a key to turn it, grabbing a steering wheel or pressing down an accelerator pedal; and thanks to haptic technology – driving a car is about to get a lot more tactile.
Haptic technology relates to the sense of touch, and it’s already found in many consumer products, most notably the Apple Watch. Haptic technology is rapidly being adopted by the automotive industry as a way to give drivers a more informed and intuitive experience. Drivers will be able to feel the road and control it’s systems using haptic sensors.
Our Sense of Touch
As we get older, our sense of touch become so intuitive, we rarely even think about it.
Within the context of haptic technology, it’s important to remember what our sense of touch is capable of doing. We can sense pressure, shearing forces, slipping, vibration, temperature and contact location. These are all tactile senses that are possible thanks to mechanoreceptors in our skin.
Our sense of touch also includes kinaesthetic senses, which are senses related to movement or strain. Kinaesthetic senses include the ability to sense position, orientation and force, including the force of gravity.
Well-designed haptic technology systems are able to engage a wide range of these senses in a way that is intuitive, or that can quickly become intuitive.
Bringing Haptics into an Automobile
Being able to safely drive a car requires a large amount of information gathering and processing. Our auditory and visual sensors are doing most of that work, and therefore are close to being saturated with information. For that reason, auto manufacturers are increasingly looking at haptic technology as a way to communicate essential information to a driver, and to allow for more user input via touch.
Among the big shifts in automotive design over the last few years has been the introduction of a dashboard display. Recently, these displays have included touchscreen capability, and a few have haptic technology to offer tactile information related to button-presses. A state-of-the-art trend in this area is capacitive touch technology in dashboards. This allows for more input control, which can cut down on the number of mechanical switches in a dashboard. This technology also provides designers much more freedom over form and function.
Cars are also increasingly and more advanced at understanding their surroundings and reacting appropriately by offering safety warnings and alerts. Rather than annoying lights or noises, information can readily be sent to the driver through vibration alerting. The two areas most often used are the steering wheel and the seat. Steering wheels can create vibrations to inform the driver when a lane change is sensed without indication. Additionally, the seats can vibrate to notify the driver if they switch lanes too slowly, or to any other indications of driver fatigue. The use of haptic feedback will only increase as cars incorporate more sensors.
Technology is also currently being developed to provide drivers with a kinaesthetic interface. For instance, rather touching a screen to input information, motorists can wave their hand in the air. Haptic sensors could “see” the hand and through ultrasound technology, and the driver could actually “feel” something in mid-air as they gesture. Using such a system, a driver could swipe their hand to skip song on a digital music player, and then feel a small ridge in the air generated by an ultrasonic device after the track has been skipped. Or, an ultrasonic device could cause a tingling sensation that allows the drive to manipulate the air-conditioning controls, swiping left or right to adjust the temperature up or down.
The use of haptic sensor systems in automobile is just emerging, but they are poised to revolutionize the industry.
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