The ATLAS Autonomous Vehicle HMI: Leveraging Sensory Substitution to Support the Accessibility Needs of Blind and Low Vision Users

The concept of sensory substitution refers to a process in which individuals who have sensory impairments like blindness or deafness use technology to compensate for or replace the missing or impaired sensory input. It is argued that the human-machine interface (HMI) of many emerging autonomous vehicles (AVs) have not been designed to appropriately address the interaction needs of persons with visual, auditory, or motor impairments, thus being an appropriate context for sensory substitution strategies. In this paper we discuss the application of visual to auditory sensory substitution in the development of an autonomous vehicle human-machine interface prototype called ATLAS; a system intended to be accessible for users with visual disabilities. We critically reflect on the implementation of the ATLAS system which we believe provides insights into specific features, many of which we believe could be useful in commercial applications. We believe that this work provides guidance on the potential use of sensory substitution in the design of AV human-machine interfaces and provides a roadmap for the development of even more sophisticated HMI prototypes.