Selection Facilitation Schemes for Predictive Touch with Mid-air Pointing Gestures in Automotive Displays

Predictive touch is an HMI technology that relies on inferring, early in the pointing gesture, the interface item a driver or passenger intends to select on an in-vehicle display [1, 2]. It simplifies and expedites the selection task, thereby reducing the associated interaction effort. This paper presents two studies on drivers using predictive touch and focuses on evaluating the best means to facilitate selecting the intended on-display item. This includes immediate mid-air selection with the system autonomously auto-selecting the predicted interface component, hover/dwell and drivers pressing a button on the steering wheel to execute the selection action. These were arrived at in an expert workshop study with twelve participants. The results of the subsequent evaluation study with twenty four participants demonstrate, using quantitative and qualitative measures, that immediate mid-air selection is a promising assistive scheme, where drivers need not touch a physical surface to select interface components, thus touch-free control.