Planning Lane Changes using Advance Visual and Haptic Information

Frissen, Ilja; Mars, Franck · 2022 · Crossref

DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1800847/v1

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Summary

This study investigates whether haptic force cues on a steering wheel are more effective than visual cues for signaling the direction of upcoming lane changes, addressing the need for efficient human-automation communication in driving. Motivated by the "dual route hypothesis," which posits that haptic cues bypass time-consuming cognitive processing by encoding directly at the sensorimotor level, the research examines how different cue modalities affect motor planning and response times. The authors reinterpret the movement precuing technique to separate the planning of a motor action from its triggering, aiming to determine if haptic imperative cues facilitate faster action selection regardless of prior preparation. The experiment involved twelve licensed drivers using a fixed-base driving simulator equipped with an active steering system for realistic force feedback. Participants performed lane changes in response to directional cues delivered via a precue-imperative cue sequence. The design included four cue combination conditions: visual-visual (VV), haptic-haptic (HH), visual-haptic (VH), and haptic-visual (HV). Precues could be valid, invalid, or neutral, with a distribution of 75%, 12.5%, and 12.5% respectively. Visual cues consisted of arrows displayed below the horizon, while haptic cues involved directional tugs or non-directional rumbles on the steering wheel. Response times, steering wheel angle profiles, and initial steering errors were recorded and analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs and delta plot analyses. The results demonstrated that conditions with a haptic imperative cue produced considerably faster responses than those with a visual imperative cue, irrespective of the precue modality. Valid and invalid precues generally produced typical gains and costs in response times, consistent with established cue-validity effects. However, a notable exception occurred in the haptic-haptic condition: there was little cost in response time or initial steering errors associated with invalid cueing. This suggests that when both cues are haptic, the penalty for overriding a prepared action is minimized. Additionally, crossmodal conditions did not show significant interference, indicating that matching precue and imperative cue modalities did not necessarily yield faster responses than mismatched conditions. These findings support the hypothesis that imperative haptic cues facilitate action selection more efficiently than visual stimuli, which require additional cognitive processing. The lack of significant cost for invalid haptic cues implies that haptic information may be processed more directly within the sensorimotor system, reducing the time needed to reprogram motor commands. This study provides empirical evidence for the benefits of in-vehicle haptics in supporting anticipatory driving maneuvers, suggesting that haptic interfaces can enhance driver performance by minimizing cognitive load and accelerating response times during critical tasks like lane changes.

Key finding

Haptic imperative cues on the steering wheel elicited faster lane change responses than visual cues and mitigated the response time costs typically associated with invalid precues.

Methodology

simulator

Sample size: 12

Provenance

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Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• haptic feedback
• feedback modes
• multimodal feedback
• multisensory crossmodal