Multimodal threat cueing in simulated Combat Vehicle 90

Authors:

  • Per-Anders Oskarsson
  • Lars Eriksson
  • Patrik Lif
  • Björn Lindahl
  • Johan Hedström

Publish date: 2008-12-22

Report number: FOI-R--2604--SE

Pages: 45

Written in: Swedish

Keywords:

  • Multimodal
  • tactile
  • 3D audio
  • WCS
  • information presentation

Abstract

Multimodal presentation means that information is given, more or less, in parallel to two or more senses. Tactile and auditory displays may contribute to intuitive transfer of information, particularly when vision is already heavily loaded or not readily available. The warning and counter measures system (WCS) in Combat Vehicle 90 (CV90) presents information on a visual head-down display, and by a beeping warning sound. The auditory warning presents no information on direction to threat, which means that critical time may be lost. With the purpose of studying more efficient transfer of information via WCS, a series of experiments has been performed with an applied driving task both in a CV90 technology demonstrator and in a simulated combat vehicle. Two of the experiments are presented in this report. In experiment 1, WCS information was presented by four types of display configurations: visual (visual head-down + mono sound), tactile (tactile belt + mono sound), 3D audio, and multimodal (visual head-down + tactile belt + 3D audio). Tactile and multimodal presentations lead to the shortest reaction times. Visual and multimodal displays gave the highest precision. The precision was markedly lower for 3D audio, owing to that warning coming from straight behind was perceived as coming from straight ahead in some instances. Experiment 1 is also published in a shortened English version as a conference paper (Carlander, Eriksson, & Oskarsson, 2007). In experiment 2, WCS information was presented by three types of display configurations: visual/3D audio (visual head-up + 3D audio), tactile/3D audio (tactile belt + 3D audio), and multimodal (visual head-up + tactile belt + 3D audio). Threat indication with 3D audio was thus included in all display conditions. Multimodal and visual/3D audio entailed the best precision. The results also showed shortest reaction times for visual/3D audio and multimodal displays. This seems to depend foremost on that the visual head-up display markedly improved the reaction time. Experiment 2 is also published in a shortened English version as a conference paper (Oskarsson, Eriksson, Lif, Lindahl, & Hedström, 2008). Both experiments showed that a multimodal display, which utilizes the advantages of each individual display, provides good performance in all situations. The visual display provides good precision, while it requires directed attention towards it to a higher degree than a tactile or auditory display. The precision of the tactile display is good enough for providing a swift and intuitive perception of initial threat direction. In this connection, 3D audio may mainly be regarded as an additional enhancement of information on direction, which has the advantage of not requiring directed attention (for catching initial attention).