A haptic feedback driver-vehicle interface for controlling lateral and longitudinal motions of autonomous vehicles

Autonomous vehicles will significantly change the existing driver-vehicle relationship, since only a destination input from the human driver will suffice. However, reduced degree of human-control could result in lack of driving pleasure and excitement. Thus, we proposed a method to increase the flexibility in controlling of an autonomous vehicle by allowing the driver to control its lateral and longitudinal motions with a time lag. We first derived a set of vehicle movements to improve driver experience and related them to a set of control functions that the driver can input. We then created two types of driver-vehicle interfaces (DVIs) for vehicle control; a haptic interface with kinesthetic and tactile feedback, and a hand-gesture interface with augmented reality feedback. The joystick-type haptic interface provides feedback on driver input by dynamically varying its degrees of freedom through controlling the current supplied to axis motors, and through vibration motors. The gesture interface is based on Leap Motion controller and provides visual feedback to driver. We conducted driving experiments in a VR simulator using twenty drivers to evaluate the effectiveness of these DVIs. The results showed that haptic interface significantly reduced the average input time and input error, and drivers preferred the haptic interface due to its ability to provide immediate, active, and passive feedback.