The last few weeks I have been working on designing a new driving experiment which would compare different user interfaces for entering license plate numbers into the police cruiser system for checking records. The two user interfaces are manual and speech. To be able to achieve this, license plates had to be added into our simulations. I have built on the results of Zeljko Medenica‘s work to put in license plates as textures in the DriveSafety simulator computers. These worked only for some car models, because of the way textures are applied to them. Here is an example of successful applications:
The plates had to be made larger than in real life, because of the limited resolution of the projection system (1024×768). This way, the plates became readable from moderate distances and still preserved a realistic feel.
The experiment hypothesizes that a voice input system would have a beneficial effect on driving performance compared to using a manual interface.
We would also research if completion time would be longer for either of the two methods. Further, looking at the eye-tracker data, it would be possible to say which method demands more visual attention. My bet is on the manual UI. We will post all interesting results on this blog.
Oszkar Palinko