A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMOTIVE

TELEMATICS SYSTEMS

Gennaro Costagliola, Sergio Di Martino, Filomena Ferrucci

Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli Studi di Salerno,via S. Allende, Baronissi, Italy

Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, Human Fa

ctors, Virtual Reality, Automotive Systems

Abstract: The evaluation of interfaces for in-car communication and information applications is an important and

challenging task. Indeed, it is necessary not only to consider the user interaction with the interface but also

to understand the effects of this interaction on driver-vehicle performances. As a result, there is a strong

need of tools and approaches that allow researchers to effectively evaluate such interfaces while user is

driving. To address the problem in the paper we propose a framework that has been specifically conceived

for such evaluation. It is based on the integration of a suitable car simulator and an in-car system and allows

us to get a high amount of data and carry out repeatable tests in a safe and controlled environment.

Moreover, the proposed solution is not much expensive and quite simple to set-up.

1 INTRODUCTION

In-car telematics systems have achieved in the last

few years very impressive enhancements in the

number of provided functionality. In fact, while the

early systems supplied mainly some basic route

calculations, currently the more advanced

commercial systems (e.g.: BMW iDrive, Fiat

Connect+ or GM onStar) allow drivers to exploit a

plethora of services, such as web browsing, e-mail

checking, phone calls, playing infotainment, and so

on. For that reason they are also referred as

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs).

Despite this improvement, interaction with ITSs

s somehow far to be well understood. This problem

has a fundamental relevance, because in the

automotive domain the user is normally busy in the

demanding and mission-critical task of the driving.

If the system requires too much attention due to a

bad design of the interface, the user can be distracted

from his/her main activity, with potentially fatal

consequences. Many studies conducted on this

argument show that distraction is the most prevalent

cause of crash, accounting till 56% in the USA

(Wang, 1996). Thus, currently there is a profound

concern that these statistics will inflate as the

potential for mental distraction increases with the

growing diffusion of ITSs (Burns 2001, Tijerina

2001). Then, because safety is paramount, many

institutions have identified as a short term priority

the research on Human-Machine Interaction for the

vehicular domain. In particular, safety evaluation of

ITSs, specifically in the context of driver distraction,

is an open and demanding research field.

Such evaluation could be carried out by

ploiting a car simulator in a safe and controlled

environment, in order to get a high amount of data

and carry out repeatable tests. Currently there are

available many car simulators, coming from both the

market and the academia (an interesting list is

provided by Inrets, 2004). Usually these products are

conceived for very complex purposes, such as driver

training, ergonomics evaluations, rapid prototyping,

and road behavior analysis. For that reason, they

require advanced computational resources to handle

the huge amount of numerical data resulting from

the simulation of several complex phenomena.

Consequently, such existing solutions are typically

very expensive (both in terms of required hardware

and software) and/or necessitate very advanced

skills for their set-up.

However, at the best of our knowledge, none of

hese products has been specifically conceived for

the evaluation of ITS user interfaces and their

impact on driver distraction. Thus, there is the need

for simpler and cheaper solutions, expressly suited

to address this problem. To this aim, we designed

and implemented a solution, which turns out to be

much more economical and easy to set-up than

others, and at the same time it allows us to perform

effective automotive user interfaces assessments.

Costagliola G., Di Martino S. and Ferrucci F. (2005).

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMOTIVE TELEMATICS SYSTEMS.

In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pages 3-11

DOI: 10.5220/0002532500030011

 SciTePress

The proposal is composed of three main modules:

a driving simulator, a telematics system simulator,

and some facilities suited to support running tests

and to enhance driver sense of presence in the virtual

scene. As for the car simulator, we successfully

adopted the Racer free simulation engine, which

offers a wide set of features useful for our purposes.

Instead the ITS was implemented by our team

exploiting some automotive rapid prototyping tools.

Both the components can execute on traditional

hardware in order to limit the costs. Finally, the

further facilities are standard electronic equipment,

such as some video-cameras and a SVGA projector.

In this paper we report on the experience we

gained from that project, in order to allow other

research centers to easily set-up similar solutions.

The remainder of the paper is structured as

follows. In section 2 we will introduce the main

aspects to consider when dealing with driver

distraction, as well as the approaches used to

evaluate it. In section 3 we will propose a generic

cost-effective framework for ITS user interface

evaluations, while in section 4 we will describe how

we implemented such framework, detailing the

adopted technical solutions. In section 5 we will

focus on an interesting feature we developed, i.e. the

interaction between the driving simulator and the

navigation assistance software. Finally, a discussion

on final remarks and future work will conclude the

paper.

2 DRIVER DISTRACTION

The recent enhancements in ubiquitous computing

and telecommunication systems have generated a

strong momentum of convergence between these

technologies and find in the automotive telematics a

very interesting field of application. Indeed, current

commercial ITSs are becoming even more some

kind of traditional PC, able to connect to the WWW,

check mail, play MP3 or DVD. Unfortunately, such

growth in the number of services offered has not

been paired by equivalent improvements in the

usability of these systems. Indeed, this is an issue

quite recent and somehow far to be well-established.

Moreover, it is widely recognized that the specific

questions inducted by the vehicular domain do not

allow designers to transpose HCI techniques,

approaches, and interaction metaphors established

for traditional desktop environments (e.g. Marcus

2004). The main difference is that when designing

desktop applications, designers can make the

assumption that the user’s attention will be mainly

focused on the interaction with the system. On the

contrary, when dealing with the automotive domain

designers cannot rely on a significant user attention,

because the interaction with an information system

is only one task among the several actions achieved

at the same time by the user. In particular, the user

performs the main task of driving, and concurrently

(s)he can also do a set of secondary tasks, involving

interactions with entertainment systems, climate

controllers, navigation aids, etc…

It is widely recognized that the use of an ITS

requires driver’s visual and cognitive resources

(Gellatly, 1997). If these demands are “excessive”

then his/her performance on the primary task of

driving may be degraded. If this co-occurs with

other external unexpected events, a crash or a near

miss may result. Many efforts have been devoted in

the literature for understanding mechanisms behind

driver distraction inducted by ITSs. However, there

is still much research to carry out about the

interaction with these systems: the current situation

recalls what happened in the ’70, with the

proliferation of many different attempts to design the

“definitive” Graphical User Interface (GUI).

Similarly, nowadays we can find on the market

dozens of different approaches, devices, and

metaphors for vehicular systems.

As a result, there is a strong need of tools and

approaches allowing researchers for an effective

evaluation of these interaction proposals.

2.1 Evaluation of Driver-Vehicle

Performances

From all the issues exposed above, it is clear that the

evaluation of an ITS User Interface (UI) is

something far from the evaluation of traditional UIs.

Indeed, it is necessary not only to consider the user

interaction with the interface but also to understand

the effects of this interaction on driver-vehicle

performances.

2.1.1 Methods

Static evaluations of vehicular systems carried out

when user is totally focusing on the system, provide

not much information about the effectiveness of the

UI. Instead, it is necessary to set up a meaningful

test-bed where the user is mainly focused on the

primary task of driving and concurrently interacts

with the system. Moreover, such test-bed should

allow researchers to evaluate driver performances by

taking into account some useful indicators. To set up

such kinds of test-bed, usually the following two

approaches are adopted: (I) the interaction with an

ITS is analyzed while the user is driving a real car

on a track closed to the traffic, or (II) the driving is

simulated in a laboratory. Each of the two

ICEIS 2005 - HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

approaches presents some advantages and

drawbacks. The former one is probably more

realistic, because the user drives a “real” car, but it

requires the availability of a closed track and a car

equipped with specific instrumentation able both to

capture information such as travel speed and lane

position and to video record the road scene and

driver eye glance (e.g. Tijerina, 1998). However, the

major drawback of this approach derives form the

difficulty of exactly reconstructing a complex

scenario (involving asynchronous events) to

replicate the experiment, which is essential to

effectively assess the UI.

On the contrary, driving a car simulator has the

substantial advantage that tests are accomplished in

a safe and controlled environment, where the risk of

personal injury and property damage is eliminated.

Moreover, it is more comfortable for researchers,

which can get a higher amount of data and carry out

more repeatable tests, by presenting to different

users the same scenario.On the other hand, the use of

car simulators is effective to evaluate many different

and complex aspects concerning with the automotive

research. As a matter of fact, several universities,

companies and research centers, such as the UMTRI,

the NADS and the Iowa University, have realized

sophisticated laboratories equipped with car

simulators. These systems are usually intended as

“complete” driving simulators, able to simulate a

high variety of physical phenomenon ranging from

the kinematics effects inducted by different

suspension geometry, to very complex traffic

scenarios. Nevertheless, these laboratories usually

cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are very

difficult to set-up. As an example, the outstanding

simulation facilities installed at UMTRI have a total

cost of over than $ 250.000 (Green, 2003).

2.1.2 Metrics and parameters

In order to assess an ITS UI it is important to

quantify the safety degree of the considered ITS.

Nevertheless, safety cannot be directly measured

(probably except in retrospect) (Tijerina, 2001).

Thus, several indirect measures of safety have been

proposed that are based on the evaluation of driver

distraction inducted by the system (e.g. CAMP,

2000). Summarizing, it is possible to say that

distraction can be both visual and cognitive (looked-

but-did-not-see). This leads towards to two main

drawbacks: degraded vehicle control and degraded

object/event detection (Brown, 1994). Usually, the

former situation arises when the driver’s eye glances

away from the road scene (without taking into

account factors such as driver fatigue) resulting in

problems in lane-keeping, speed maintenance, etc…

The latter instead is usually due to an excessive

cognitive workload (for example inducted by a cell

call), and is a more insidious to evaluate, because

vehicle control remains largely unaffected but

detection and reactions of unexpected object and

event is degraded (Tijerina, 2001).

These considerations suggest several indicators to

take into account to measure driver distraction. As

an example, measurement of speed maintaining

performance is a good indicator for the evaluation of

visual attention, but says nothing about the selective

withdrawal of attention that might be inducted by an

excessive cognitive workload (Tijerina, 2001). Other

indicators are driver eye glance behavior, durations,

and scanning patterns, lane-keeping, speed

maintenance, car following performance, and driver

reaction times to asynchronous events. Finally,

measures of the in-vehicle task, such as task

completion time, have been used or are being

proposed as an index of the distraction potential of a

device (Green, 1998).

3 THE PROPOSED FRAMEWORK

The purpose of our research was to implement a

framework for supporting the evaluation of

automotive telematics system user interfaces. The

main goals of our proposal were:

– To be specifically suited for telematics

assessment, i.e. don’t caring about extreme

realism or other simulation aspects, such as road

conditions, different engine types, kinematics of

suspensions, etc...,

– To effectively support running tests, i.e. easily

collect the needed data about subjects behaviors,

– To be cost-effective both in hardware and human

resources, i.e. being able to execute on standard,

economic hardware, without requiring complex

installations or set-ups.

– To allow us to test the navigator module in the

virtual environment. This implies that the driving

module and the navigator have to share the same

map and the information about the car position.

It is worth to point out that currently usability

evaluations of navigation systems are performed

using real cars and not simulators (e.g.: Tijerina,

1998), because, at the best of our knowledge,

currently there aren’t simulation environments

offering this fundamental feature.

Such evaluation framework is intended as a

composition of three main kinds of facilities, i.e. a

driving simulator, a telematics system, and some

instrumentation to record subject’s interactions. In

the following subsections we will detail the

characteristics of these components, while in section

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMOTIVE TELEMATICS SYSTEMS

4 we provide a more deeper description of the

framework we set-up in our lab and in section 5 we

will describe the link between the driving simulator

and the navigator module.

3.1 The Driving Simulator

The main aim of this simulator is to propose a

realistic driving environment, which should facilitate

running experiments. In the meantime test subjects

should receive credible feedbacks from their actions

(e.g.: steering wheel shake when leaving the lane

and going off-road), as well as feel a sense of

presence in the virtual environment (Green, 2003).

These goals may be achieved by a simulator able to:

1. Provide a realistic dynamics program governing

the behaviour of the virtual vehicle.

2. Provide realistic rendering of the scenario with

a frame rate of at least 30 fps.

3. Enhance the sense of presence in the virtual

scenario. This can be achieved by projecting the

simulated scenario onto a wide-screen that

covers a significant subject’s angle of view, by

providing a realistic spatial audio, by using at

least a 5.1 surround system, and by providing

realistic force-feedbacks on the steering wheel.

To ensure the effectiveness for the evaluation, the

simulator should provide further some specific

features. Among these, there is the possibility to

generate asynchronous external events to test driver

workload. For example, other simulated cars on the

track with their own behavior (e.g. braking, turning,

etc…) can add much meaningfulness to the

simulation.

Another fundamental aspect for supporting

experiments is the telemetry logging, i.e. the

recording of the numerical data on what the car and

the driver are doing. This because by analyzing this

information it is possible to better understand user’s

behaviors and feedbacks to specific events,

recognizing potential degraded vehicle controls (i.e.

problems in lane-keeping or speed maintenance) or

degraded object/event detection (i.e. abnormal delay

between an asynchronous event and driver

response). Moreover, having an history of these

data, it is possible to compare driver performance

when altering external factors, such as different

sensorial channels used to provide information to the

user, or different layouts/organizations for

graphical/vocal user interfaces. The most relevant

information to store deals with the vehicle dynamics,

the asynchronous events generated by the simulator

(i.e. the traffic), and the user inputs. For example,

basing on this set of data, it is possible to recognize

degraded vehicle controls (i.e. problems in lane-

keeping or speed maintenance) or degraded

object/event detection (i.e. abnormal delay between

an asynchronous event and driver response).

Finally, the driving simulator should provide

some user-friendly tools for designing tracks and

scenarios.

3.2 The ITS Simulator

About the telematics simulator, its main

characteristic regards the possibility to easily define

or modify the User Interface. Indeed, in order to

assess different proposal, the simulator should

permit to change the appearance and the behavior of

the widgets composing the interface, to modify their

displacement on the screen (in order to verify

different layouts) and to rearrange the menu item

clustering. Moreover, if the assessment regards also

multi-modal aspects, the simulator should provide

speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies, and

even some primitives for defining haptic feedbacks.

Finally, this simulator should also facilitate

running experiments, i.e. it should collect significant

data and measurements about both the asynchronous

events generated by the telematics system (i.e. route

guidance indication or an incoming call), and the

subject behaviors.

About non-functional requirement, the simulator

should execute on traditional hardware. If the system

is developed together with an automotive OEM, the

use of standard embedded technologies can add

great value, permitting the porting of some modules

on automotive hardware.

3.3 Other facilities

To complete the framework, there is the needing of

some other instrumentation, useful to perform

comprehensive data collection about subject’s action

and distraction, such as eye-tracking. This can be

accomplished with a set of standard video-cameras,

placed in hidden spots. The minimal configuration,

as suggested by (Green, 2003), consists of three

cameras, one recording the subject’s face, one the

vehicle interior, and one the forward scene. The first

shot reflects anxiety and difficulties with a task,

showing in the meantime the eye’s glance and where

subjects are looking. The second one shows control

use and may be analyzed to determine task times and

the number of errors, while the third one is useful to

show the primary source of demand.

ICEIS 2005 - HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

4 AN IMPLEMENTATION OF THE

FRAMEWORK

In the last three years, there was a strong

collaboration between our faculty and the HMI

department of one of the most important European

automotive manufacturers. As a result, we defined

some novel ITSs interfaces. Thus we needed some

facilities to assess these proposals, having however

strong economical constraints about the resources

we could dedicate to this aim.

By conducting deep evaluations on open-source

driving simulators, and by developing some specific

applications, we were able to set-up a test-bed

facility matching the requirements exposed in the

previous section. In particular, we implemented the

above depicted framework by integrating two

different modules: a free driving simulator, Racer

(Van Gaal, 2000), and a prototype of next generation

telematics system we developed.

About the major features provided by the

framework, it offers an extensive data logging of

driver inputs and vehicle motion, the audio/video

recording of user actions, and the possibility to

define arbitrary tracks, with basic traffic

characteristics. Moreover, a distinguish feature of

our proposal is the possibility to tightly connect the

simulator and the telematics system, by sharing the

same track/map, as will be detailed in section 5. This

allows us to conduct extensive and effective

assessment on the navigator module.

4.1 The basic architecture

The proposed system is mainly based on two

software modules, running on two different PCs.

The resulting architecture, shown in Figure 1, is

composed of:

– A graphical workstation, suited to run the

simulation engine. In our lab we adopted an HP

Ewo W6000, based on an Intel Xeon 2,8 Ghz,

512 Mb of RAM, an nVidia Quadro4 video card

and a Creative Labs Audigy audio card; the

operating system is Windows XP Pro, SP2.

– A tablet PC, suited to execute the telematics

system simulator. In our lab we adopted an HP

tc1100, 512 Mb RAM, running Windows XP

Tablet edition.

– A force-feedback wheel, with rudders. We

selected the Logitech Formula Force GP, which

seemed us a very good compromise between

price and offered features;

– A 5.1 audio system. We selected the Creative

Labs MegaWorks THX 5.1;

– A SVGA projector;

– At least 3 cameras, to record respectively driver

eye glance, interaction with the “dashboard” and

the whole simulation scenario.

Figure 1: The architecture of the framework

4.2 The Simulation Engine

Currently they are available a lot of car simulation

engines suitable for HMI evaluation purposes,

ranging from big and expensive commercial

solutions, such as GlobalSim HyperDrive

(GlobalSim), to small, free and/or open source

projects, such as Torcs. Usually the formers are

mainly focused on simulating with the highest detail

the physics of a vehicle, but they usually have high

costs and require the set-up of lots of parameters to

start the simulation. On the other hands, the latter

very often are focused on providing fun more than

accuracy in simulation, being intended as

videogames. After a wide-ranging evaluation, we

selected the engine named Racer, a free, open-

source car simulation project, because we

experienced that with some particular adjustments to

the configuration files, it was able to accomplish all

the fundamental tasks required for the HMI

evaluation. Indeed, among the main advantages of

this engine, it provides satisfactory physics by using

6 DOF models and motion formulae from SAE, it is

very flexible because almost all simulation

parameters are customizable through ASCII files,

there is a good documentation about the file formats,

it supports force-feedback devices, it provides high-

quality OpenGL rendering (as visible in Figure 2),

the tracks and the scenes can be created with relative

simplicity through many free user-friendly editors,

and last but not least, it is totally free for non-

commercial use.

Finally, Racer allows for a basilar simulation of

traffic conditions, exploiting the features related to

the AI. In particular, the simulation engine allowed

us to program different vehicles to follow specific

routes and behaviors on the track.

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMOTIVE TELEMATICS SYSTEMS

Figure 2: A Racer screenshot

4.3 The telematics system

In 2003, the Department of Mathematics and

Informatics of the University of Salerno and the Fiat

research centre “Elasis” started an EU granted

project aimed to realize a prototype of next-

generation telematics systems. The main goals of

such a prototype were to define an architectural

model for the development of future ITSs, to

evaluate the risks inducted by novel technologies

such as wireless protocols, Bluetooth profiles, etc…,

to evaluate the risks, the costs and the benefits of

novel services, such as tele-aid, remote diagnostics,

etc…, and to conduct usability tests on novel

multimodal interfaces, encompassing vocal, video

and tactile interaction.

Figure 3: Screenshot of the ITS user interface

The system has to provide a wide set of features,

such as GPS Navigator, Entertainment section

(Tuner, CD, MP3- Wma, DVD, DivX), Phone Cell

(calls, SMS), “@ module” (WWW, e-mail), and

“Innovative Services” (remote diagnostics, accident

prevention, tele-aid, etc…). Moreover, it has to

exploit a wide set of Bluetooth protocol profiles,

such as SAP, headset, Sync, FTP, etc, in order to

interact with the typical tomorrow’s Personal Area

Network devices. The prototype was implemented

using C#, for Microsoft .NET platform.

The graphical and haptic user interface developed

for the prototype are described in (Costagliola,

2004c), and shown in Figure 3, while the vocal user

interface was presented in (Costagliola, 2004b).

For this prototype we defined a specific

architecture, characterized by a sharp division

between logics and interface. This allowed us to

successfully employ the system, together with the

simulator, to assess the distraction inducted by

different interface layouts and innovative services,

as well as the effectiveness of multi-sensorial

interactions. Indeed, thanks to a meta-UI generator

based on XML, the prototype consents to modify

with minimal efforts the widgets composing the UI,

their disposition on the screen and the menu

clustering.

Figure 4: The architecture of the developed prototype

Further implementation details of the system, as

well as a description of the innovative and flexible

design pattern we defined for the development can

be found in (Costagliola, 2004a). The resulting

architecture is depicted in Figure 4. Some modules

have been modified from the original project, in

order to best fit simulation needs. In particular, the

modules surrounded by dashed lines have been

replaced by some signals generated by the

simulation engine.

ICEIS 2005 - HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Table 1: Logged data

Racer log file generated at 05-11-2004 12:15:03

time Steer force_feed throttle brake vx vy vz x y z

9895 -8507501 0.000340 0.000000 0.398000 0.001296 -0.000058 0.003972 -57678322 0.516207 245962250

9900 -8507501 0.000443 0.000000 0.398000 0.001786 -0.000051 0.004131 -57678318 0.516207 245962265

9905 -8507501 0.000525 0.000000 0.398000 0.002164 -0.000044 0.004230 -57678314 0.516207 245962280

9910 -8507501 0.000598 0.000000 0.398000 0.002429 -0.000038 0.004320 -57678310 0.516207 245962296

9915 -8507501 0.000662 0.000000 0.398000 0.002599 -0.000033 0.004403 -57678307 0.516207 245962311

4.4 Logging of information

In our system, to record the simulator data, we took

advantage of the logging feature provided by Racer.

Indeed, simply setting the parameter log.enable to 1

in the debug.ini file, it is possible to activate the

registration of the simulation data. Moreover,

changing other parameters in the log section of the

debug.ini file it is possible to indicate what

information to store and the sample frequency. In

our simulator, then, the data coming from the

simulator are stored in a log ASCII file at a

frequency of 20 Hz. An example of such data is

shown in Table 1: every 50 milliseconds, we keep

track of the Steering position, the force-feedback

provided on the wheel, the value of the throttle and

brake, the vehicle speed on the 3 axis, and its

position on the track. As for the telematics systems,

we store all those information, together with the time

they took place, in a space separated ASCII file.

This allow for an easy data analysis with tools like

Microsoft Excel or SPSS.

4.5 Total costs

Table 2: Costs for setting-up the simulator

Item Cost

Graphical Workstation 4,500€

Tablet PC 1,400€

SVGA Projector 750€

Logitech Wheel w/ Force Feedback 60€

5.1 Audio System 100€

#3 Digital Cameras 1,500€

Navtools SDK 5,000€

Total 13,310€

In our opinion, one of the main advantages of our

proposal is in the trade-off between costs and

offered functionality. In Table 2 there are

summarized the costs we sustained for the start-up

of the simulator. As one can see, following our

approach, with less than 15.000 € it is possible to

set-up a test-bed for automotive HMI evaluation,

which is a very significant reduction if compared

with the hundred of thousands dollars usually

required for other driving simulators.

5 INTEGRATION BETWEEN THE

TWO SIMULATORS

A distinguishing feature offered by our

implementation of the framework is the integration

between the simulation engine and the navigator

module on the telematics systems. This means that

the road driven by the user on the car simulator is

shared as a map on the ITS. This permits to exploit

many standard navigation features, such as Map

Display and Route Guidance, namely the process of

generating and then providing to subjects turn-by-

turn graphical/vocal directions for a calculated route.

Such integration is a very powerful instrument,

because it allows us to perform many significant

route guidance experiments. As an example, we can

evaluate the best modality for providing route

guidance to the user (vocal, iconic, etc…), or the

most appropriate vocabulary to support the way-

finding, as well as assess the cognitive work

inducted by these different modalities. At best of our

knowledge, there are no simulators offering such

characteristic.

In the following we will describe how we have

implemented such integration by illustrating how the

driving simulator and the ITS share the same

cartographical information. Moreover, we will

describe how the navigator is aware of the actions

made by the subject in the driving simulator, in

order to update in real time the position of the car

shown on the navigator map, and to undertake the

necessary Route Guidance actions.

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMOTIVE TELEMATICS SYSTEMS

5.1 Sharing the cartography

The navigator we implemented is based on NAVTEQ

technology. This is one of the two standard global

cartographical databases adopted for automotive

systems (the other one is TeleAtlas). Navteq

provides a useful SDK to create navigation system

applications and adopts the open format SDAL

(SDAL, 1999) for the navigation map database. The

SDK comes with some maps, such as the European

one.

On the other hand, Racer adopts its own

graphical file format to represent the tracks, named

DOF1 and based on the SGI IFF file format. DOF1

exploits OpenGL XYZ coordinate system and

contains all the information about the scene graph of

the model. In particular, it holds data about the

geometry objects composing the track, i.e.

information about the vertices and the normals,

together with many other data, such as the texture

used to render the surfaces.

Taking into account the adopted file formats,

there are two ways to share the cartography between

these two simulators. The first one is to create a

SDAL map starting from a DOF1, while the second

one is the reverse approach.

Some initial trials we conducted to create a SDAL

file starting from a Racer track gave us bad results,

mainly because SDAL file format is very complex.

Indeed, it is principally focused on optimization

because it is conceived for automotive systems,

which usually have restricted hardware resources.

As a matter of fact, it makes use of specific and

different data structures for the various features,

such as Map Display (optimized for pan and zoom),

Route Calculation (organized to facilitate rapid route

calculation), and Route Guidance (organized as

manoeuvre parcels containing additional

information needed for direction generation and

route guidance). An overview of the data structures

is provided in (SDAL, 1999). Moreover, this initial

approach compelled us to give up some Navteq

features, such as the estimated travel times for a

given segment.

Instead creating a DOF file from an existing part

of a map resulted more practical, giving us much

better results. Our work then consisted in

implementing a kind of translator able to create the

appropriate DOF1 file starting from a small area of a

SDAL map. In particular, such translator generates

the geometry primitives starting from the parcels

that are the basic units of I/O used in the SDAL

format. Because Navtools SDK provides a wide set

of functions to access SDAL information, the main

difficulty was to correctly estimate a shared scale

factor for the two files, i.e. given a NavTech Unit,

(equal to 1/100,000 of a degree) used to store

latitude/longitude in the SDAL database, to

understand the corresponding value in the DOF1

file.

5.2 Updating the localization

To address the second issue concerning with

updating in real-time the position of the car on the

map we have let the simulator to export information

about the car movements and the navigator to accept

such information as if it comes from GPS sensor. In

particular, it was required to get information about

coordinates, speed, and heading of the car. As

described in 4.4, Racer outputs this information in

its log file. Thus, we implemented a daemon

working in background on the graphical workstation,

listening to the changes in the log file and, after

some elaboration, sending the necessary data on a

TCP socket shared with the TabletPC. Here,

Navtools Vehicle Positioning System provides some

procedures to access an I/O object (the socket) to

compute the vehicle location. Such location can

obviously be used for all necessary navigation

features, such as Map Display, Route Calculation,

and Route Guidance.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE

WORK

Safety on the roads is one of the main goals for

everyone involved in the automotive field. The

advent of ITSs can distract user from the main task

of driving the car, with potentially fatal effects.

Nevertheless, it has been estimated that these

systems will become commonplace in the last few

years. Thus, it is a short term priority to investigate

solutions to enhance usability of ITSs and then limit

driver distraction. Currently many research institutes

across the world are involved in the definition of

novel User Interfaces for automotive systems, but

the evaluation of such interfaces is a challenging and

expensive task. Indeed it requires non-trivial

resources, intended both as a private track, cars and

instrumentation, or as very specialized car

simulators in labs.

In this paper we propose a solution for the

evaluation of user interfaces in the automotive

domain by using a simulator. Currently there are

available off-the-shelf many commercial car

simulators, but they are usually more oriented to

represent with the highest realism all the aspects of

the kinematics of a vehicle. As a result, they are very

ICEIS 2005 - HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

expensive (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars)

other than being relatively difficult to set-up.

Our proposal, instead, is intended to provide the

features suited to evaluate the vehicle-driver’s

performance when using a telematics system, thus

not focusing on extremely detailed simulation

aspects. The consequence is that the complete

simulator can be set-up with less than 15,000 $. In

particular, the proposed solution is composed by a

graphical workstation, running the very interesting

free car simulator, Racer, connected via LAN to a

TabletPC running an our own developed telematics

system, encompassing a wide set of next-generation

services, such as Bluetooth, integrated Cell Phone,

vocal user interface, etc…Both the PCs are able to

provide logging features of the user actions, in order

to record and then analyze driver’s behaviours and

performances during the interaction with the ITS.

Obviously this is the most relevant aspect of the

simulator because it allows researches to evaluate

the distraction inducted by each specific

feature/User Interface of the telematics system.

Moreover, another distinguishing characteristic of

our proposal is the possibility to tightly connect the

simulator and the ITS, by letting them share the

same track/map. This allows us to conduct very

effective and detailed investigations about the

interactions (and the related effects on distraction)

between driver and navigator.

Finally, about future work, we are planning to

exploit a new feature of Racer, i.e. the multiview,

which enables to use multiple computers to render a

widescreen view, as well as we are developing a tool

for the rapid development of automotive user

interfaces starting from visual specifications, in

order to evaluate the distraction inducted by

different control layouts or menu item clustering.

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A FRAMEWORK FOR THE EVALUATION OF AUTOMOTIVE TELEMATICS SYSTEMS