Conference PaperPDF Available

Abstract and Figures

Cycling stimulates the human mind and body in manifold ways. However, even on a leisure ride, certain waypoints or destinations must be reached. Therefore, orientation is a crucial task for every cyclist. Vibrotactile systems for cyclists do not clog up the visual and auditory senses needed to experience the immediate environment. However, our literature survey shows that previous work focuses on turn-by-turn navigation systems and does not leverage the potential of vibrotactile feedback on the head. Since the head is not in direct contact with the bike, we argue that vibrations occurring naturally are less confounding. Moreover, head movements are already crucial for wayfinding. We present an unobtrusive orientation system for cyclists with head-based vibrotactile feedback – a vibrotactile compass. In a user study, we show the feasibility of our system.
Content may be subject to copyright.
A head-based vibrotactile compass for cyclists
Anna-Magdalena Krauß
anna-magdalena.krauss@htw-dresden.de
University of Applied Sciences Dresden
Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Dennis Wittchen
dennis.wittchen@htw-dresden.de
University of Applied Sciences Dresden
Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Dietrich Kammer
dietrich.kammer@htw-dresden.de
University of Applied Sciences Dresden
Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Georg Freitag
georg.freitag@htw-dresden.de
University of Applied Sciences Dresden
Dresden, Saxony, Germany
Figure 1: The system supports cyclists in orientation with a headband (right) for vibrotactile feedback, which is activated by a
push button mounted to the bicycle handlebars (left). The accompanying mobile app is not shown in the image.
ABSTRACT
Cycling stimulates the human mind and body in manifold ways.
However, even on a leisure ride, certain waypoints or destinations
must be reached. Therefore, orientation is a crucial task for every
cyclist. Vibrotactile systems for cyclists do not clog up the visual
and auditory senses needed to experience the immediate environ-
ment. However, our literature survey shows that previous work
focuses on turn-by-turn navigation systems and does not leverage
the potential of vibrotactile feedback on the head. Since the head is
not in direct contact with the bike, we argue that vibrations occur-
ring naturally are less confounding. Moreover, head movements
are already crucial for waynding. We present an unobtrusive ori-
entation system for cyclists with head-based vibrotactile feedback
a vibrotactile compass. In a user study, we show the feasibility of
our system.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed
for prot or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation
on the rst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
Mensch und Computer 2021, Workshopband , 14. Workshop Be-greifbare Interaktion
©Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
https://doi.org/10.18420/muc2021-mci- ws09-381
CCS CONCEPTS
Human-centered computing Haptic devices
;User studies;
Interface design prototyping; User centered design; Activity centered
design.
KEYWORDS
human-computer-interaction, interaction design, head, wearable,
vibrotactile, navigation support, cyclist, user study
1 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of many (digital) tools and processes is to enable peo-
ple to perform their tasks more eciently. In contrast, most leisure
activities are generally free and playful without the need to fulll
specic tasks as fast as possible. In this contribution, we focus on
cycling as such a leisure activity. Although cycling is also used to
reach a certain location, its value is often perceived to be the activ-
ity itself for purposes of recreation, sports, or group experiences.
However, orientation is needed for a cyclist to determine their cur-
rent location in the environment. Most navigation systems follow
a turn-by-turn approach to reach a certain location as eciently as
possible by following a determined path. In contrast, we attempt to
respect the autonomy of the user even more and not distract cyclists
from their environment with unsolicited instructions. Hence, our
goal is to support basic orientation in an unobtrusive way as shown
Mensch und Computer 2021, Workshopband , 14. Workshop Be-greifbare Interaktion Krauß et al.
in our user study. During a bicycle ride, cyclists are exposed to nu-
merous environmental factors that already stress their visual and
auditory senses, such as trac or sightings in nature. Our approach
is based on a vibrotactile interface in order to keep visual and audi-
tory channels free for the actual cycling. The interface is located at
the cyclists’ head, since other parts of the human body are in closer
contact with the bike and could thus be more susceptible to natural
vibrations caused by cycling. The head is also the natural center
for orientation and has a high sensibility for recognizing vibrations
[16].
We present our contributions in this paper as follows: First, we
review related work in the area of vibrotactile interfaces with a
focus on navigation support for cyclists. Second, we describe the
concept for our head-based vibrotactile system. In section 3, we
also outline the technical realization of this system in a working
prototype. This prototype was validated in a user study (section
4). Finally, we discuss the viability of our approach to support
orientation for cyclists (section 4.4) and comment on future work
(section 5).
2 RELATED WORK
Previous research shows how the tactile sense can be leveraged to
convey information via so-called Tactons, generated using vibrotac-
tile displays. Those "structured, abstract messages [...] can be used
to communicate [...] non-visually" [
3
]. In the context of navigation,
they can convey the direction or the distance to the destination. The
system Tacticycle supports tourists in exploring their environment
on a bike [
17
,
18
]. The system combines vibrotactile feedback with
a visual display in a multi-modal way. Potential traveling destina-
tions and points of interests are highlighted on a visual display
mounted on the handlebar. Both handles contain one vibration
motor (tactor) each. Similar to our system, the immediate direction
to the destination or point of interest is conveyed by vibrating.
However, dierent intensities are used and only a 180-degree spec-
trum of directions ahead of the cyclist is covered. The system was
tested in dierent settings following a requirements analysis. In
contrast, Vibrobelt is a turn-by-turn navigation system for urban
areas [
19
]. Eight tactors around the hips direct the cyclist towards
the desired destination. Two distance levels are distinguished by
the duration and repetition of the vibrations. Escobar Alarcón and
Ferrise present vibrotactile wristbands for a navigation system [
1
].
Each wristband contains a single tactor. Consequently, the direc-
tion to the destination is conveyed by vibrations on either the left
or right wrist. Similar to Vibrobelt, two distance levels are distin-
guished by the duration and repetition of the feedback. Matviienko
et al. evaluated dierent modalities (visual, auditory, and tactile)
for navigational cues tailored towards child cyclists [
14
]. Therefore,
they present a navigation system NaviBike similar to Tacticycle,
with a single tactor in each handle of the handlebar. Thus, convey-
ing the direction to the next waypoint and signaling distance in the
same way as with Vibrobelt and Tacticycle. Since hands, feet, and
bottom are in direct contact with the bike they can convey outside
vibrations to the body while cycling on uneven trails. Hence, in
contrast to previous systems, we propose to investigate the head
as location for vibrotactile feedback during cycling. Furthermore,
the head is also the natural center for orientation and therefore we
adapted the hardware setup of Vibrobelt to a headband. Due to the
promising research results of using vibrotactile ring displays on
the head [
4
,
5
,
11
13
,
15
,
16
], we aim to leverage this potential to
support orientation for cyclists in a novel, head-based vibrotactile
system.
3 CONCEPT AND IMPLEMENTATION
The metaphor for our approach is a compass, which oers support
for orientation by indicating the direction to north. In our case, a
single reference point serves as the nal destination or an arbitrary
orientation point selected by the cyclist. Moreover, we extended
the metaphor by giving feedback when a destination is reached.
3.1 Requirements
In order to support orientation for cyclists in an unobtrusive and
comfortable way, basic system requirements must be met, following
the standards from ISO 9241 (11, 110, 210) [
8
10
]. Simplicity is a
fundamental requirement of the technical system (R1–simplicity).
During the bicycle ride, the outputs should be immediately inter-
pretable and usable for route planning. The frequency of interaction
with the system should be as low as possible (R2–interaction). Fur-
thermore, it should be possible to use the system on longer tours.
An important prerequisite of this is a high level of wearing comfort
in terms of pressure, weight, and vibration (R3–comfort). In addi-
tion, the use of the head-based vibrotactile output system and its
activation should provide high usability (R4–usability).
3.2 Design and Implementation
As shown by systems like Tacticycle [
17
,
18
] and Vibrobelt [
19
],
two-dimensional directional information seems sucient for the
context of cycling. Therefore, we conceived a circular vibrotactile
display, integrated into a headband, that signals the direction to a
destination in relation to the user’s head orientation.
The hardware to realize this system consists of three parts: a
headband, a push button unit, and a smartphone. Since Dobrzynski
et al. showed that twelve tactors are well perceived around the
head [
5
], we followed this suggestion and constructed a vibrotactile
headband with twelve eccentric rotating mass (ERM) tactors. Each
of these are 2
𝑚𝑚
thick and 10
𝑚𝑚
in diameter and were mounted
orthogonally in relation to the head, in order to utilize their vi-
bration direction. This was achieved by inserting them into soft
plastic foam glued onto the headband (see Figure 1 and Figure 2 (2)).
Twelve holes were cut into the outer layer of the headband to route
the tactor cables to the WeMos Lolin32 single-board microcontroller
at the back of the band. The processing unit and a lithium-polymer
battery pack were wrapped by foam rubber and xed by reusable
velcro ties onto the headband. The headband is made of elastic
material, which ts a wide range of head sizes. This preliminary
design for the headband is inferior to a version integrated into an
actual helmet, which is our plan for the future. In total, the head-
band weighs 125 g. To trigger the vibration in a safe manner, we
placed a push button unit consisting of a push button, an indicator
LED, an Arduino HUZZAH32 single-board microcontroller and a
lithium-polymer battery pack on the bicycle’s handlebars. A custom
application running on a smartphone (Google Pixel 2) is used to
set the destination on a map and provides the necessary location
A head-based vibrotactile compass for cyclists Mensch und Computer 2021, Workshopband , 14. Workshop Be-greifbare Interaktion
(4) Android App
communication via
Bluetooth Low Energy
Vibrotactile display
with 12 tactors
(2) Headband
request orientation
information
set destination (once)
and retrieve geolocation
while riding (continously)
(3) Push button(1)
255°
75°
105°
165°
195°
285°
135°225°
315° 45°
15°345°
Figure 2: The vibrotactile compass consists of three main components: the headband as vibrotactile display (2), a push button
to trigger the feedback (3), and a mobile app (4). The headband displays the direction towards the destination with a resolution
of 30 degree (i.e. twelve directions in total) with respect to the user’s head orientation (1).
data while riding. All three hardware components communicate
via Bluetooth Low Energy.
For the directional output, we use simple and concise tactons by
encoding the direction to the destination via the position of a single
activated tactor (see Figure 2 (1)). All tactons used for displaying
directions to the user appear in a repeating sequence of 300
𝑚𝑠
vibration followed by a 300
𝑚𝑠
pause. The duration of the output is
determined by the user, who can request the vibrotactile feedback
in a self-determined manner by pressing the push button (see Figure
2 (3)). The feedback that the destination has been reached must be
clearly distinguishable from the directional tactons described above.
For this purpose, a tacton with a transformation is used. Alternately,
every other tactor is activated for 500
𝑚𝑠
each. To ensure that the
tacton is perceived by the user, it is repeated again after a 500
𝑚𝑠
pause. We purposely omitted other distance information to keep
the system as simple as possible (see R1).
We decided to use a xed vibration frequency for all outputs.
As the manufacturer does not provide a characteristic curve, the
employed frequency can only be estimated by utilizing curves from
similar tactors. By measuring the voltage and using the curve of NFP
310-118, we estimated the vibration frequency to be around 200
𝐻𝑧
and thus slightly higher than recommended by [
4
,
15
] to make
sure that vibrations are perceived impeccably in the conditions of
cycling. Since the frequency and the intensity of the vibration is
coupled for ERMs the intensity remains the same across the tactons
as well.
4 USER STUDY
We validated the requirements dened in section 3.1 for our concept
to test its feasibility for the use case of cycling as a leisure activity.
4.1 Preliminary Test
We tested the output of directions via the headband in a laboratory
setting with 12 participants and in a restricted parking area where
ve given destinations had to be reached using feedback from the
headband. All participants reacted or stated that they perceived the
vibrations. In total, 144 directional outputs were displayed in the
lab and participants aligned themselves to the correct direction 140
times. In 82% of these tasks, the recognition time between presen-
tation of the direction and nal alignment of the participant was
equal or below 10 seconds. In the parking area, 9 of 12 participants
used head rotation for orientation before steering their bicycles
in the appropriate direction. When moving to the target, 11 of 12
participants had to repeatedly correct their route. Due to the lim-
ited dimension of the test eld, circular movements were used to
move closer to the target area. However, 10 of 12 participants rode
directly to the target and only made ne adjustments on the spot.
Hence, we could prove that our headband provides perceivable and
interpretable feedback.
4.2 Study Design
The main study was conducted with six participants (three female,
three male) with an average age of 30,5 (SD=13,05) in a large park
area (1900
𝑚×
950
𝑚
) in the center of Dresden. The objective was
to reach a given destination in a natural navigation scenario. To
make this situation even more realistic, we allowed participants to
use their own bicycles. A common starting point and a destination
unknown to the participants were selected. They were free to nd
their own route without further restrictions (e.g. time limit) and
there was only one test run per participant. An experimenter en-
tered the target into the mobile app before starting the test. After
that, the participant was free to activate the system for orientation
Mensch und Computer 2021, Workshopband , 14. Workshop Be-greifbare Interaktion Krauß et al.
Table 1: Results of the NASA RTLX (0 Very Low - 100 Very
High).
Dimension Mean Median SD Min. Max.
Mental Demand 30 22.5 23.24 5 65
Physical Demand 13.33 17.5 8.76 0 20
Temporal Demand 12.5 15 8.22 0 20
Performance 25.83 22.5 29.40 0 80
Eort 11.67 10 11.25 0 25
Frustration 15 17.5 12.65 0 30
at any time by pressing the push button. Each participant was ac-
companied by two experimenters in approximately 5 to 10 meters
distance in order to observe their general behavior. After the naviga-
tion task, the participants were asked to ll in some questionnaires
to gain qualitative data for the evaluation of R1 (simplicity), R3
(comfort), and R4 (usability).
4.3 Results
First of all, all participants were able to nd and reach the destina-
tion.
Simplicity was investigated using the NASA RTLX test [
6
,
7
].
A total value of 18 (scale 0 - 100, where 0 means easy to use) was
obtained, which means that the system can be used with little
cognitive eort. A detailed list of the results can be found in Table
1. In addition, the participants were asked to recall landmarks or
occurrences seen during their rides (see Figure 3). In particular,
they were requested to state the number of cyclists and families
with children, as well as recalling points of interest (POIs). The
majority of participants were able to indicate the correct number
of cyclists seen (4 of 6) as well as families (5 of 6). Participants who
failed to indicate the correct numbers stated that they had paid
more attention to animals during the ride. All participants were
able to name the correct POIs, even in chronological order. During
the study, participants exhibited relaxed behavior. They were able
to perceive the environment at their leisure and even talk to the
accompanying investigators. The overall results suggest that the
use of the technical setup is pleasant and eortless (R1–simplicity).
In addition, 4 of 6 participants actively looked around by turning
their head. This behavior shows that using our system is in line
with natural head movements of the user for orientation. For better
traceability, the duration and location were saved as soon as the
push button on the handlebar was pressed. The analysis of these
log les showed that the system was only used selectively and
not continuously. The average duration for displaying the signal
was 1
.
12
𝑠
. In addition, all participants used the system ahead of
intersections, while 3 of 6 also used the system on straight stretches
of road to make sure where the destination was located. The study
suggests that the system is mainly used at intersections, but can
also serve as conrmation on straight stretches of track. The rare
interaction with the system met the requirement R2 (interaction).
The requirement for comfort (R3) referred to the wearability
of the headband in general. In a post questionnaire the comfort
was rated as pleasant, with median values of 5 for pressure, 5 for
vibration, and 4.5 for weight (1=unpleasant, 5=pleasant). Overall,
the majority of the participants mentioned that the pressure, vibra-
tion and weight of the headband didn’t bother them at all during
the ride. Furthermore, they stated to not feel restricted in their
movements by the system. In summary, R3 has been met. Usability
(R4) was investigated in the natural setting with a System Usability
Scale (SUS) questionnaire. The average result of 87 points indicates
that the system is “excellent” to “best possible” [
2
]. In the quali-
tative evaluation, the participants also stated that they liked the
system because it aords freedom of movement and ease of use. In
addition, they were able to concentrate completely on the track,
being in control of frequency and duration of the feedback without
being distracted by a navigation display. This consistently positive
feedback shows that R4 (usability) was met in our validation.
4.4 Discussion and Limitations
The aim of the user study was to verify the feasibility of the techni-
cal system. The results showed that the tactons displayed via the
headband are perceptible and distinguishable. With the help of the
tactons, the participants were able to orient themselves in a large
area (approx. 2
𝑘𝑚2
) and to navigate self-determinedly. The head-
band proved to be usable, easy to use, and comfortable. Explicitly,
the high freedom of movement and the immediate interpretation of
the results should be emphasized. In addition, there are individual
dierences and requirements of the cyclist and the chosen route.
Orientation becomes more challenging in unknown environments.
Since most of the participants in the study already knew the test
area, we cannot fully validate the supporting eect of our system
in unknown environments. We need to investigate this in the fu-
ture. The evaluation of comfort showed a high level of satisfaction.
However, the duration of use in the study was shorter than we
intended for a typical bicycle tour that could last more than an
hour. In addition, the headband could only be worn in place of a hel-
met. Integrating the system into a helmet could make a signicant
dierence in safety, perception, and comfort.
5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this work we presented a vibrotactile feedback system for cyclists
that encodes directional information in order to support orientation.
We conceived and implemented a technical setup that keeps the user
self-determined and conducted a user study to test its feasibility.
The results show that the headband meets our requirements for
simplicity (R1), interaction (R2), comfort (R3), and usability (R4).
For the further development of the system, it is planned to ex-
amine the headband in an in-situ study. This requires investigating
longer and more intensive use during bike tours. Additionally, we
should consider comparing our system to similar (compass-like)
navigation systems. Moreover, we can investigate the level of dis-
traction and cognitive eort of using visual and vibrotactile nav-
igation systems individually or in a combined setup. So far, the
system only provides directional information to the user and there
are various options to extend the corresponding tactons. To in-
crease the degrees of freedom when designing tactons we have to
switch to another type of tactors namely linear resonant actuator
(LRA). These enable separate control of the vibration’s amplitude
A head-based vibrotactile compass for cyclists Mensch und Computer 2021, Workshopband , 14. Workshop Be-greifbare Interaktion
0100 200 300 m
Figure 3: The routes chosen by the participants in the restricted area.
and frequency. This also allows us to better accommodate the char-
acteristics of vibrotactile perception. Additionally, users can adapt
the vibration’s intensity according to their individual preferences.
From the conceptual perspective, it might be useful to provide more
information such as the distance to the destination. We plan to
publish the schematics and circuit layout as well as the source code
(i.e. rmware and app) under open source licences. This should
encourage others to reproduce the system or even le pull requests
for enhancements or new features.
We are convinced that the suggested setup is not limited to
the context of cycling. Hence, we will consider a transfer to other
helmet systems and user groups, e.g. reghters, visually impaired
people, or industrial workers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank all participants for testing the head-
band in our user study. We also thank Philipp Ballin for supporting
the study as experimenter. Especially we thank Alexander Ramian
for his technical support throughout this project. Furthermore, we
thank Christopher Praas for creating the demo video. This work
has been supported by the European Regional Development Fund
and the Free State of Saxony (project no. 741012023).
REFERENCES
[1]
Escobar Alarcon and Francesco Ferrise. 2017. Design of a wearable haptic navi-
gation tool for cyclists. In 2017 International Conference on Innovative Design and
Manufacturing. 1–6.
[2]
Aaron Bangor, Philip Kortum, and James Miller. 2009. Determining what indi-
vidual SUS scores mean: Adding an adjective rating scale. Journal of usability
studies 4, 3 (2009), 114–123.
[3]
Stephen Brewster and Lorna M Brown. 2004. Tactons: structured tactile messages
for non-visual information display. In Australasian User Interface Conference 2004
(ACS Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Vol. 28).
Australian Computer Society, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 15–23. http://eprints.gla.
ac.uk/3443/
[4]
Victor Adriel de Jesus Oliveira, Luciana Nedel, Anderson Maciel, and Luca Brayda.
2016. Spatial discrimination of vibrotactile stimuli around the head. In 2016 IEEE
Haptics Symposium (HAPTICS) (Philadelphia, PA). IEEE, New York, NY, USA, 1–6.
https://doi.org/10.1109/HAPTICS.2016.7463147
[5]
M. K. Dobrzynski, Seifeddine Mejri, S. Wischmann, and D. Floreano. 2012. Quan-
tifying Information Transfer Through a Head-Attached Vibrotactile Display:
Principles for Design and Control. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
59, 7 (2012), 2011–2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2012.2196433
[6]
Sandra G. Hart. 2006-10. Nasa-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX); 20 Years Later.
Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 50, 9
(2006-10), 904–908. https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120605000909
[7]
Interaction Design Group Magdeburg. 2016. NASA-TLX (Kurzfassung deutsch) -
Beanspruchungshöhe. http://interaction-design- group.de/toolbox/wp-content/
uploads/2016/05/NASA-TLX.pdf Last accessed 14 December 2020.
[8]
ISO 9241-11. 2018. Ergonomics of human-system interaction - Part 11: Usability:
Denitions and concepts.
[9]
ISO 9241-110. 2020. Ergonomics of human-system interaction - Part 110: Interac-
tion principles.
[10]
ISO 9241-210. 2019. Ergonomics of human-system interaction - Part 210: Human-
centred design for interactive systems.
[11]
Oliver Beren Kaul and Michael Rohs. 2016. HapticHead: 3D Guidance and Target
Acquisition through a Vibrotactile Grid. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference
Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (San Jose, California,
USA) (CHI EA ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA,
2533–2539. https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892355
[12]
Oliver Beren Kaul and Michael Rohs. 2017. HapticHead: A Spherical Vibro-
tactile Grid around the Head for 3D Guidance in Virtual and Augmented Real-
ity. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3729–3740.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025684
[13]
Oliver Beren Kaul and Michael Rohs. 2019. Concept for Navigating the Visually
Impaired using a Tactile Interface around the Head. In Hacking Blind Navigation
Workshop at CHI ’19 (Glasgow, Scotland Uk) (CHI Workshop ’19). 5 pages. https:
//hci.uni-hannover.de/papers/KaulChi2019_Workshop.pdf
[14]
Andrii Matviienko, Swamy Ananthanarayan, Abdallah El Ali, Wilko Heuten,
and Susanne Boll. 2019. NaviBike: Comparing Unimodal Navigation Cues for
Child Cyclists. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300850
[15]
Kimberly Myles and Joel T. Kalb. 2010. Guidelines for Head Tactile Communication.
Technical Report. Defense Technical Information Center. https://doi.org/10.
21236/ADA519112
[16]
Kimberly P. Myles and Mary S. Binseel. 2009. Exploring the Tactile Modality for
HMDs. In Helmet-mounted displays: sensation, perception, and cognition issues.
U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory, Alabama, USA, 849–876.
[17]
Martin Pielot, Benjamin Poppinga, Wilko Heuten, and Susanne Boll. 2012. Tacticy-
cle: Supporting Exploratory Bicycle Trips. In Proceedings of the 14th International
Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (San
Francisco, California, USA) (MobileHCI ’12). Association for Computing Machin-
ery, New York, NY, USA, 369–378. https://doi.org/10.1145/2371574.2371631
[18]
Benjamin Poppinga, Martin Pielot, and Susanne Boll. 2009. Tacticycle: A Tactile
Display for Supporting Tourists on a Bicycle Trip. In Proceedings of the 11th
International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and
Services (Bonn, Germany) (MobileHCI ’09). Association for Computing Machinery,
New York, NY, USA, Article 41, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/1613858.1613911
[19]
Haska Steltenpohl and Anders Bouwer. 2013. Vibrobelt: Tactile Navigation Sup-
port for Cyclists. In Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Intelligent
User Interfaces (Santa Monica, California, USA) (IUI ’13). Association for Comput-
ing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 417–426. https://doi.org/10.1145/2449396.
2449450
... In recent years, the interest in directly supporting cyclists has grown (Schneeberger et al., 2023;Savino et al., 2021;. Beyond assistance in hazard detection, such systems could aid cyclists in, navigation (Albrecht et al., 2016;Huxtable et al., 2014;Matviienko et al., 2019;Savino et al., 2020), exploration Krauß et al. (2021); Poppinga et al. (2009), group cycling (Kräuter et al., 2016), getting on/off the bike and balancing while cycling (Dubbeldam et al., 2017) or for traffic education of child cyclists (Matviienko et al., 2020). ...
... (2020) (but they indicated absolute direction by head orientation). For the provision of tactile cues on the head, Vo et al. (2021) suggested using four tactons in a helmet to mediate cardinal directions, while Krauß et al. (2021) proposed a headband with 12 tactons evenly distributed for directional cues. They used a vibration frequency of 200 Hz, which they reported to be slightly higher than recommended by Oliveira et al. (2016), to make sure the cue is perceivable. ...
Article
Full-text available
Cyclists frequently face numerous hazards on the road. Often those hazards are posed by motorised vehicles. Advanced support systems that alert cyclists to potential dangers could enhance their safety. However, research in this area, particularly regarding hazard notifications for cyclists, remains sparse. This work assesses bi-modal early hazard notification concepts (combining visual cues with either auditory or tactile feedback) provided at head level (smart glasses with speakers, tactile headband). They are detailing the nature of the hazard, its direction relative to the cyclist, and the timing of exposure. This work investigates cyclists' preference and perception of the proposed concepts for two hazardous situations originating from interactions with vehicles: ‘dooring’, the hazard of a potential collision with an opening door of a parked vehicle (evaluated through a test track study, N = 32) and ‘being overtaken’ which poses the hazard of being cut off or hit by the overtaking vehicle (assessed in a bicycle simulator study, N = 21). The study involved comparisons of supported and unsupported rides, focusing on their impact on usability, intuitiveness, workload, and perceived safety. Our findings reveal varied preferences for the supporting feedback modality, with 56% favouring visual-auditory and 31% visual-tactile. The participants rated user experience, intuitiveness and perceived safety for the use of both concepts quite high. Further, the workload for assisted rides was rated as equally low as for unassisted rides.
... For example, AR allows cyclists to see through walls, display warning signals, or visualize safe crossing cues. Besides using visual indicators to augment cyclists, past research investigated vibrotactile feedback as an alternative interaction modality [45]. However, adding additional cues into a cycling scenario can increase the degree of distractions. ...
... Previous research has informed us about two aspects: (1) Current selection techniques in AR and (2) and increased use of AR to improve the cycling experience and safety. Here, previous research showed that AR for cyclists is increasing the safety of vulnerable users [53], while new concepts were investigated to improve the cycling experience [45,76]. However, the interaction with AR in a cycling environment was not explored yet. ...
Article
Full-text available
Cyclists' attention is often compromised when interacting with notifications in traffic, hence increasing the likelihood of road accidents. To address this issue, we evaluate three notification interaction modalities and investigate their impact on the interaction performance while cycling: gaze-based Dwell Time, Gestures, and Manual And Gaze Input Cascaded (MAGIC) Pointing. In a user study (N=18), participants confirmed notifications in Augmented Reality (AR) using the three interaction modalities in a simulated biking scenario. We assessed the efficiency regarding reaction times, error rates, and perceived task load. Our results show significantly faster response times for MAGIC Pointing compared to Dwell Time and Gestures, while Dwell Time led to a significantly lower error rate compared to Gestures. Participants favored the MAGIC Pointing approach, supporting cyclists in AR selection tasks. Our research sets the boundaries for more comfortable and easier interaction with notifications and discusses implications for target selections in AR while cycling.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Navigation systems for cyclists are commonly screen-based devices mounted on the handlebar which show map information. Typically, adult cyclists have to explicitly look down for directions. This can be distracting and challenging for children, given their developmental differences in motor and perceptual-motor abilities compared with adults. To address this issue, we designed different unimodal cues and explored their suitability for child cyclists through two experiments. In the first experiment, we developed an indoor bicycle simulator and compared auditory, light, and vibrotactile navigation cues. In the second experiment, we investigated these navigation cues in-situ in an outdoor practice test track using a mid-size tricycle. To simulate road distractions, children were given an additional auditory task in both experiments. We found that auditory navigational cues were the most understandable and the least prone to navigation errors. However, light and vibrotactile cues might be useful for educating younger child cyclists.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Since cyclists do not have their auditory and visual channels completely available while riding a bicycle, it is unsafe for them to use the GPS navigation tool provided by smartphones, which is based on audio and visual cues. In such situations, the haptic channel can be suitable to deliver information. Therefore, a research developing a system that uses haptic cues to give bicycle riders turn-by-turn information was carried out. The proposed solution uses two vibrotactile motors, each one located on each wrist. The motors are controlled by an Arduino board connected via Bluetooth to an Android App which oversees the GPS navigation and provides real-time turn-by-turn instructions. The cyclist is informed on the direction by the vibration of the motors: if the motor vibrating is located on the left wrist then s/he would have to turn left, and the same applies to the other side. We used two types of buzzes: a single buzz indicates a distance of approximately 60 m, and a double buzz points out that the turn is imminent. When both motors are activated at the same time the system communicates to the user the arrival to the destination. The system was initially tested with few users giving positive feedback. The haptic signal was considered intuitive and easy to understand, efficiently providing turn-by-turn navigation instructions.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Current virtual and augmented reality head-mounted displays usually include no or only a single vibration motor for haptic feedback and do not use it for guidance. We present HapticHead, a system utilizing multiple vibrotactile actuators distributed in three concentric ellipses around the head for intuitive haptic guidance through moving tactile cues. We conducted three experiments, which indicate that HapticHead vibrotactile feedback is both faster (2.6 s vs. 6.9 s) and more precise (96.4% vs. 54.2% success rate) than spatial audio (generic head-related transfer function) for finding visible virtual objects in 3D space around the user. The baseline of visual feedback is as expected more precise (99.7% success rate) and faster (1.3 s) in comparison, but there are many applications in which visual feedback is not desirable or available due to lighting conditions, visual overload, or visual impairments. Mean final precision with HapticHead feedback on invisible targets is 2.3° compared to 0.8° with visual feedback. We successfully navigated blindfolded users to real household items at different heights using HapticHead vibrotactile feedback independently of a head-mounted display.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Several studies evaluated vibrotactile stimuli on the head to aid orientation and communication. However, the acuity for vibration of the head's skin still needs to be explored. In this paper, we report the assessment of the spatial resolution on the head. We performed a 2AFC psychophysical experiment systematically varying the distance between pairs of stimuli in a standard-comparison approach. We took into consideration not only the perceptual thresholds but also the reaction times and subjective factors, like workload and vibration pleasantness. Results show that the region around the forehead is not only the most sensitive, with thresholds under 5mm, but it is also the region wherein the spatial discrimination was felt to be easier to perform. We also have found that it is possible to describe acuity on the head for vibrating stimulus as a function of skin type (hairy or glabrous) and of the distance of the stimulated loci from the head midline.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Going on excursions to explore unfamiliar environments by bike is a popular activity in many places in this world. To investigate the nature of exploratory bicycle trips, we studied tourists on their excursions on a famous vacation island. We found that existing navigation systems are either not helpful or discourage exploration. We therefore propose Tacticycle, a conceptual prototype of a user interface for a bicycle navigation system. Relying on a minimal set of navigation cues, it helps staying oriented while supporting spontaneous navigation and exploration at the same time. In cooperation with a bike rental, we rented the Tacticycle prototype to tourists who took it on their actual excursions. The results show that they always felt oriented and encouraged to playfully explore the island, providing a rich, yet relaxed travel experience. On the basis of these findings, we argue that exploratory trips can be very well supported by providing minimal navigation cues only.
Conference Paper
Current generation virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) usually include no or only a single vibration motor for haptic feedback and do not use it for guidance. We present HapticHead, a system utilizing 20 vibration motors distributed in three concentric ellipses around the head to give intuitive haptic guidance hints and to increase immersion for VR and AR applications. Our user study indicates that HapticHead is both faster (mean=3.7s, SD=2.3s vs. mean=7.8s, SD=5.0s) and more precise (92.7% vs. 44.9% hit rate) than auditory feedback for the purpose of finding virtual objects in 3D space around the user. The baseline of visual feedback is as expected more precise (99.9% hit rate) and faster (mean=1.5s, SD=0.6s) in comparison but there are many applications in which visual feedback is not desirable or available due to lighting conditions, visual overload, or visual impairments.
Conference Paper
Tactile displays can be used without demanding the attention from the human visual system, which makes them attractive for use in wayfinding contexts, where visual attention should be directed at traffic and other information in the environment. To investigate the potential of tactile navigation for cyclists, we have designed and implemented Vibrobelt. This belt, worn around the waist, gives waypoint, distance and endpoint information using directional tactile cues. We evaluated Vibrobelt by comparing it to a visual navigation application. Twenty participants were asked to cycle two routes, each route with a different application. We measured the spatial knowledge acquisition and analyzed the visual focus of the participants. We found that Vibrobelt was successful at guiding all participants to their destinations via an unfamiliar route. Participants using Vibrobelt showed a lower error rate for recognizing images from the route than users of the visual system. Users of the visual system were generally navigating faster, and were better at recalling the route, showing a higher contextual route understanding. The endpoint distance encoding was not always correctly interpreted. Future research will improve Vibrobelt by making a clearer distinction between waypoint and endpoint information, and will test users in more complex navigational situations.
Conference Paper
NASA-TLX is a multi-dimensional scale designed to obtain workload estimates from one or more operators while they are performing a task or immediately afterwards. The years of research that preceded subscale selection and the weighted averaging approach resulted in a tool that has proven to be reasonably easy to use and reliably sensitive to experimentally important manipulations over the past 20 years. Its use has spread far beyond its original application (aviation), focus (crew complement), and language (English). This survey of 550 studies in which NASA-TLX was used or reviewed was undertaken to provide a resource for a new generation of users. The goal was to summarize the environments in which it has been applied, the types of activities the raters performed, other variables that were measured that did (or did not) covary, methodological issues, and lessons learned
Article
A helmet-mounted tactile display is desired for military applications such as cueing to alert Soldiers to the direction and location of an event or indicating movement direction in GPS-supported navigation. However, the system must be compatible with the head sensitivity of the user to ensure the user's optimal perception of the provided information. The purpose of this report is to document the overall findings of the basic research program regarding head tactile sensitivity and to provide answers to two basic questions: (1) What locations on the head are most sensitive to vibration stimulation? (2) What is the optimal frequency for tactile signals to be applied to the head? The overall findings are discussed and are considered as initial guidelines for head tactile communication and for using vibration stimulation on the head.
Article
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is an inexpensive, yet effective tool for assessing the usability of a product, including Web sites, cell phones, interactive voice response systems, TV applications, and more. It provides an easy-to-understand score from 0 (negative) to 100 (positive). While a 100-point scale is intuitive in many respects and allows for relative judgments, information describing how the numeric score translates into an absolute judgment of usability is not known. To help answer that question, a seven-point adjective-anchored Likert scale was added as an eleventh question to nearly 1,000 SUS surveys. Results show that the Likert scale scores correlate extremely well with the SUS scores (r=0.822). The addition of the adjective rating scale to the SUS may help practitioners interpret individual SUS scores and aid in explaining the results to non-human factors professionals.