The focus of our project is to provide a system that will enhance the visual and auditory cues provided by an automobile. The primary goal is to increase travel safety by providing the driver with information that is currently unavailable to him/her through sight and sound. Additionally, our system with enhance current cues provided to the driver but may be easily ignored. 

A system designed to aid the driver should address the role of sound in the driving 'experience'. Many times drivers are unaware of the auditory signals around them while driving due to interference from either road noise or the radio. We propose additional subsystems to compensate for these distractions. The first would be the installation of an active noise cancellation device. Since the 'white' noise produced by the road and air is some what constant, the production of sound waves 180 degrees out of phase would cancel out the unwanted noise. Such a system has already been designed and implemented in some commercial propeller commuter airplanes. 

The second auditory subsystem would be a 'smart mixer'. This device would regulate the sound of the radio with important sounds on the exterior of the automobile. In order to ensure that the driver can hear approaching emergency vehicles, once detected the radio would lower and 'pipe in' the siren to the audio system. Since the automobile will installed with a surround sound system, the siren would be directional within the car so the driver would know which direction the emergency vehicle was approaching. 

No matter how well a car is designed, there is one flaw that all automobiles share: blind spots. Our system will compensate for this by alerting the driver that an object is currently in the drivers blind spot. Low power dispersed lasers would be mounted to the car (perhaps in the wheel wells) to detect objects within a given distance. If another car is in a blind spot, a visual cue would be given to the driver. An additional auditory signal would be produced if the driver were to indicate his/her intention to move in that direction (turn signal, current gear, etc.). 

It was a wet, rainy evening when Damion twisted the key in the ignition of his new, Sonopticon(tm)-equipped Lexus. The motor roared to life, only to subside to a quiet hum as the active-noise cancellation system came on-line. The soft, soothing notes of the Cleveland Philharmonic soon filled the cabin. 

As Damion started to drive away, he noticed that his visibility was quite limited. "HUD on, please", he said. As he turned out of the parking lot, green figures appeared in the middle of the windshield, outlining the telephone pole across the street, and the car waiting at the light half a block away. As he drove down the street, the HUD would display an outline of other cars far ahead of him on the road, alerting him to any traffic hazards up ahead. 

It had been a long day, and he was quite tired. Seeing the freeway entrance ramp up ahead, Damion started to reach for his turn signal. A low hum, barely louder than the music on the radio, came from behind him and to his left, and he quickly thought better of the idea. A moment later he saw the VW bug emerge from his blind spot and fade off into the darkness ahead of him. He finished changing lanes, and got onto the freeway. 

Soon after Damion had gotten up to speed and into traffic, he heard the ringing of his built-in cellular phone through his speakers. "Answer phone", he said. Immediately the CD stopped, and he talked to his caller for several minutes. As soon as he hung up, the CD resumed playing. 

As he exited the freeway, he heard a siren. Normally, like everyone else in Atlanta, Damion would keep driving until he could figure out where the ambulance was, and if it would pass him. This time, though, he heard that the sound was distinctly coming from directly behind him, and he pulled over. The ambulance soon went screaming past and his car, sensing that the ambulance had made its closest approach to him and was now heading away, silenced the siren. 

Damion finally pulled up in his driveway after his long commute home. "Boy," he said, "I'm sure glad I bought a Sonopticon(tm)!" 

Learnability 

The user should be able to execute basic operations of the system with mininal instruction and learning time. Also, the system should be designed to allow the user to quickly achieve maximal proficiency using advanced features 

Measurable Aspects: 

The user will be given a brief overview of the system's operation. Only basic features will be explained. The time required for the user to properly execute specific features of the system will be measured. Also, whether or not the user discovers the detailed features of the system without assistance will be noted. 

Unobtrusiveness 

An augmented reality display should not introduce visual clutter or sensory confusion for the user. Visual icons and auditory signals should not distract the user from a primary task (driving in our case). 

Measurable Aspects: 

The user's driving ability will be observed both while using the display and when not using the display. This information will be used to determine the degree to which the interface may distract a driver. 

Situational Awareness 

An augmented reality interface should result in the user experiencing an enhanced degree of awareness. The audio and visual aspects of the system should expand the user's ability to operate safely and efficiently in an environment. 

Measurable Aspects: 

A key component of our interface will be a blind spot and collision warning system. If a car enters the blind spot, or if a collision with an object is imminent, the driver will be given an audio warning. The ability of the user to react properly to these warnings will be observed. 

Drivers are often unaware of the presence or direction of oncoming emergency vehicles. Many drivers find sirens difficult to localize directionally. Also, loud radios and engines can obscure sirens. Our interface will have the capability to verbally inform the user of the direction and speed of an oncoming emergency vehicle. This warning will be at a volume above all car radio and engine sounds. The audio warning will come from the direction of the emergency vehicle. The speed and effectiveness of the driver's response to these warnings will be analyzed.

Today, there are many interfaces between the driver and the automobile: visual, auditory, haptic, even olfactory (if you consider that carbon monoxide is deliberately odorized so as to be detectable). Indeed, every surface of the car is an interface of sorts. Herein lies a problem as representative of our culture as anything: too much information. While advances in interface technology between the human and the driving machine have (in some cases) made switching radio stations at 55mph a bit less dangerous, the vast proliferation of available interfaces can so distract that -- though usable in isolation -- their multiplicity can be a hindrance. 

There are some basic deficiencies in today's auto interfaces. Consider that most of the information presented to a driver is about the environment within and about the car: gas level, keys in ignition, cabin temperature. What seems more useful (in terms of safety) is information about the environment outside and around the car: collision avoidance, location of emergency vehicles, low-visibility warnings. In short, the interface of the car of the future should extend the driver's perceptual space out into the world rather than creating a hermetically sealed, ghostly quiet environment sealed off from it. Quietness is a key point here because, while cars are getting quieter and quieter their visual displays are (in general) becoming more and more cluttered. We are asked to pay attention to the tachometer, the speedometer, the stereo (with 10-disc CD changer), the temperature controls, the cellular phone, the gas reading and various other gauges, not to mention road signs of various levels of intensity, flashing LED billboards informing us of roadway conditions, and possibly an onboard trip computer with all sorts of obscure features like distance since last time the spark plugged was checked. Radar detectors, flat-panel GPS tracking maps, and other gizmos and doodads litter the dashboards of today's cars. 

We are interested mostly in the output interface or the displays of the car. Since the basic input features of the car -- clutch, transmission, accelerator, brake pedal, steering wheel -- are totally ubiquitous and almost universally understood we have chosen to focus on how the car informs the driver of its state and the conditions which exist around it rather than focusing on improved ways of delivering information to the vehicle as such. Our basic tenant of design: the interface must be dynamically aware of how ignorable it is. That is, information should be ambient if possible and delivered in such a way as to connote its relative importance given the situation at hand. 

Some higher-end automobiles have begun to incorporate advanced features into their interface. Many sports cars have linked the stereo volume to the tachometer and speedometer so that when the car accelerates and the ambient noise of the engine increases the volume of the stereo scales accordingly. We envision a system that improves upon such "smart mixing" capabilities and scales all cabin noises relative to their importance. We would like to make as much of our interface aural in nature as possible. This is due to the ignorability as well as the inherent spatiality (an underused dimension in auto displays) of sound. Rudimentary versions of audio displays do exist: the click-clack of a turn signal or hazard light, the beep of the button as the radio memorizes a station, the ding-dong alerting you of your keys being left in the ignition, even the whine of the engine as it climbs a steep grade. However, sound in general has been avoided in the interface of cars. This is perhaps due to the unquestioned failure of speech displays in many cars of the 1980's. "The door is ajar" has become a comedian's cliche and perhaps rightly so. While we believe that there is limited application for speech in our interface we also realize how commanding a voice (even a synthesized voice) can be of our attention. Thus, we will focus on non-speech aural cues to improve the safety and awareness of the driver.