| Summary: | This master thesis is the result of a project co-organised by the department of human work science at Luleå University of Technology and CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique). In today’s vehicles advanced technology is increasing rapidly. The use of this technology most likely improves both mobility and comfort but will, on the other hand impose a secondary task on the driver, which can potentially distract the driver from the primary task, driving. To decrease the amount of time drivers’ eyes are off the road, the sense of touch, haptics, is being used more frequently as a modality and complement to the vision when developing interfaces. The aim of this thesis is to study if, and how, haptics can improve the interaction between the driver and the vehicle and make the in-vehicle use of Internet safer. Furthermore, this knowledge will be applied to develop a prototype of a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) and haptic feedback for a rotary haptic knob, the MR-Drive, for in-vehicle Internet navigation. The opening phase consisted of information gathering about multimodality, HMI, GUI and haptics. Next, possible internet-functions for in-vehicle use were enumerated and a requirements list for the prototype was specified and several concepts of the GUI were designed and one was chosen. The choice of GUI concept strived to fulfil the criteria in the requirements list concerning: design guidelines that will ease the navigation within the menu by emphasising the placement of items and operational design. From here, several haptic textures were developed for the chosen concept’s haptic feedback, to determine the preferred textures a usability study was carried out. The result of the user study reveals that it is easy to differential the haptic textures apart but difficult to associate the textures to a certain application. The result also indicates a preference for textures with lower torque. Validerat; 20101217 (root)
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