HapWheel: Bringing In-Car Controls to Driver’s Fingertips by Embedding Ubiquitous Haptic Displays into a Steering Wheel

Recently, there has been an excessive congestion occurring in the driving environment because of the presence of modern gadgets inside the car and increased traffic on the roads, which has resulted in a higher demand for the visual and cognitive senses. This prompted the need to reduce the demand to make driving experience safer and more comfortable. Consequently, a novel steering wheel design for in-car controls is presented in this paper. The new design introduces dual ubiquitous touch panels embedded in the steering wheel for interaction with in-car controls and haptic feedback as positive reinforcement upon successful execution of an in-car control. There are eight different functionalities that can be controlled using the embedded touch panels. The proposed system is compared with a standard car regarding its efficacy using the NASA task load index (NASA-TLX) evaluation technique. The results showed that the proposed system significantly reduced the drivers’ visual, cognitive, and manual workload.