Haptic Applications Enhance The Safety and Usability of Telematic Systems

Automotive systems are becoming increasingly complex, as automotive telematic designers look to innovative new interface solutions that support dynamic interfaces.  Increasingly, solutions for automotive environments add haptic effects to their unique UI solutions because haptics enhances the safety and usability of telematic systems, increasing the user’s confidence in the navigation of the automotive interface.

Immersion offers a number of solutions are flexible and programmable, supporting the multitude of interface options for designers, including:

• Touch surface interactions such as buttons, sliders and wheels
• Touchscreens
• Rotary joysticks

Applications where haptics can provide tactile feedback to help create a more confident and safe user experience in an automotive environment include:

Infotainment

If predictions prove right, the feature gap between in-car infotainment systems and home PCs will soon narrow. Cars will have a multitude of entertainment options, built-in hard drives for upload, storage, and playback of photos, music, and videos. Wi-Fi technology for browsing the Internet, car-to-car communication, and customizable driving routes via drag-and-drop will all be possible.  With this wide array of functionality from information to entertainment, the user interface to the center stack is becoming more of a challenge.  Adding haptic feedback transforms this new UI into an engaging, confident experience.

Navigation

Touchscreens are a natural interface for navigation systems, and tactile feedback is an excellent compliment – improving the overall touchscreen usability as well as specific features of the navigation system human-machine interface.

 

Climate Control

With the addition of complex functionality to automotive systems, option panels allow manufacturers to reduce the number of mechanical controls while using the same real estate for multiple functions leaving quite a bit of industrial design flexibility.  Climate or environmental controls are frequently delivered in this manner, and haptic feedback transforms this new UI into an engaging, confident experience.