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This will be huge for automotive touchscreen applications: I have no doubt it will save lives. With current touchscreen interfaces, you rely almost solely on v

This will be huge for automotive touchscreen applications: I have no doubt it will save lives. With current touchscreen interfaces, you rely almost solely on visual cues and feedback to make correct inputs. Not a good situation while driving, when you need as much visual attention as possible focused on the road. The best interfaces for operating complex or dangerous machines have fixed, haptically identifiable reference points; this allows you to reach out (in the dark or without shifting visual focus) and make some sort of adjustment without fumbling or disturbing your flow. If the touchscreen can be elegantly brought into that realm, so much the better. Tesla Model S 2.0 perhaps? BTW, anyone have an idea of how this technology works? Update: From the article linked below in a comment by kpozin, it's based on hydraulics. Ingenious.

kiba 14y ago
Well, self driving cars will make the safety application moot.
- reneherse 14y ago
  I'm a big fan of the nascent self driving technology, but vehicles in the first several waves of that revolution will still need a proper human interface. And realistically, I think "dual interface" cars will own the general market (non-taxi, etc) for a long time to come. Anyone who enjoys driving once in a while on a nice piece of road (E.G. the 280 between Daly City and Cupertino) is going to want a car that also features a manual mode. Eventually we'll have cars where a hidden steering wheel unfolds from the dashboard and pedals rise from the floor. And parental controls to prohibit your teen from accessing them ;)
run4yourlives 14y ago
Similar to kiba's comment below, but perhaps a step in between, it would make sense for car designers to look at other similarly complex machines that require the operator's constant attention to the outside world before innovating blindly. HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) as a concept has been adopted almost exclusively in fighter aircraft - and extended into Formula 1 and Indy cars as well - for this exact purpose. The modern car dashboard design is beyond stupid, almost criminally so when you start to see 12 inch video screens placed underneath the windscreen in such a way that the driver has to take his attention off the road to use pretty much anything in the car. Tactile feedback isn't going to help much if you are fumbling with controls floating an arms length away between you and the passenger. There is plenty of room on the steering wheel for all of the car's functional controls, especially if you make use of a HUD/windscreen visual menu and multifunction controls. I almost exclusively use my 5 button steering wheel control to manage my entire audio experience while driving right now. I'm not sure how many people will need to be killed before something like that becomes the norm. Of course, seatbelts and airbags both required their fair share of human sacrifice before the car gods decided lowly operators warranted them, so maybe kiba is onto something. :-)
- reneherse 14y ago
  I very much agree that dashboard design is generally awful. As controls have become more digital and less mechanical, they seem to have come to require more attention. For instance, one general pattern used to be if you wanted warm air you slid a horizontal lever more or less to the right or left. Once you got used to it, you could set it without looking, and with gloves on. Nowadays it's much more likely that you spin a knob or repeatedly press a button to set the temperature, and instead of the setting being indicated by a combination of position and color/text, you likely have only a numeric value, an exclusively visual indicator. Not only does the digital, numeric value (usually in degrees F or C) provide a (possibly) unneeded level of precision, it's a visual-attention sink. The "glass cockpit" of the Tesla I have to believe is even worse in this context. However, given its extreme versatility, I doubt the touchscreen will be going away. If a screen interface can be designed to require less attention, and I believe it can be, it's possible that we can gain all the promised flexibility of glass without it becoming a safety hazard. Thanks for the HOTAS reference, btw. Hadn't heard of that.
  - ollysb 14y ago
    The indicator controls are a good example of this. They used to mechanically click into one of 3 positions, indicate left, off and indicate right. This made it very easy to switch them off. Now when you want to manually switch off the indicator it's very easy to to go too far and start indicating in the opposite direction. The only way to know what position they're in is then to look down at the lights on the dashboard. It's seems a huge step backwards in usability.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  Unless they're in a dogfight, airplanes do not require constant attention to the outside world. That's why autopilots and drones are technologies that have been available in the aerospace industry for years, but are just now getting good enough to consider in cars. Also consider the amount of training that goes into becoming a fighter pilot, vs. learning to drive a car. Powerful interfaces are complex and require a lot of training to manage properly under stress--which is when it is most important to do it right. That said, modern cars do have a lot of controls on the steering wheel: all the typical blinkers, brights, horn, etc. and now often radio controls, cruise control, telephone Bluetooth controls, even gear shifting paddles. HUD has been tried in cars before, but never caught on. Drivers tended to find it more distracting than helpful. Most of the information for driving does not need to be so..."contextual", the way that, say, a missile targeting system does. Anything that intercedes itself directly between the driver's eyes and the outside world could be dangerous. I do agree with you that the touchscreens in the dash are frickin awful UI design. I think they are like the "store" setting on LCD TVs--their main job is to look cool in the showroom.
jeremyarussell 14y ago
I dug this up from the uspto website. http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week20/OG/html/1378-3/US08179375-20120515.html http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week20/OG/html/1378-3... Go to the full text and then the images area and you get to see more detailed diagrams.

kiba 14y ago

Well, self driving cars will make the safety application moot.

reneherse 14y ago
I'm a big fan of the nascent self driving technology, but vehicles in the first several waves of that revolution will still need a proper human interface. And realistically, I think "dual interface" cars will own the general market (non-taxi, etc) for a long time to come. Anyone who enjoys driving once in a while on a nice piece of road (E.G. the 280 between Daly City and Cupertino) is going to want a car that also features a manual mode. Eventually we'll have cars where a hidden steering wheel unfolds from the dashboard and pedals rise from the floor. And parental controls to prohibit your teen from accessing them ;)

run4yourlives 14y ago

Similar to kiba's comment below, but perhaps a step in between, it would make sense for car designers to look at other similarly complex machines that require the operator's constant attention to the outside world before innovating blindly. HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick) as a concept has been adopted almost exclusively in fighter aircraft - and extended into Formula 1 and Indy cars as well - for this exact purpose. The modern car dashboard design is beyond stupid, almost criminally so when you start to see 12 inch video screens placed underneath the windscreen in such a way that the driver has to take his attention off the road to use pretty much anything in the car. Tactile feedback isn't going to help much if you are fumbling with controls floating an arms length away between you and the passenger. There is plenty of room on the steering wheel for all of the car's functional controls, especially if you make use of a HUD/windscreen visual menu and multifunction controls. I almost exclusively use my 5 button steering wheel control to manage my entire audio experience while driving right now. I'm not sure how many people will need to be killed before something like that becomes the norm. Of course, seatbelts and airbags both required their fair share of human sacrifice before the car gods decided lowly operators warranted them, so maybe kiba is onto something. :-)

reneherse 14y ago
I very much agree that dashboard design is generally awful. As controls have become more digital and less mechanical, they seem to have come to require more attention. For instance, one general pattern used to be if you wanted warm air you slid a horizontal lever more or less to the right or left. Once you got used to it, you could set it without looking, and with gloves on. Nowadays it's much more likely that you spin a knob or repeatedly press a button to set the temperature, and instead of the setting being indicated by a combination of position and color/text, you likely have only a numeric value, an exclusively visual indicator. Not only does the digital, numeric value (usually in degrees F or C) provide a (possibly) unneeded level of precision, it's a visual-attention sink. The "glass cockpit" of the Tesla I have to believe is even worse in this context. However, given its extreme versatility, I doubt the touchscreen will be going away. If a screen interface can be designed to require less attention, and I believe it can be, it's possible that we can gain all the promised flexibility of glass without it becoming a safety hazard. Thanks for the HOTAS reference, btw. Hadn't heard of that.
- ollysb 14y ago
  The indicator controls are a good example of this. They used to mechanically click into one of 3 positions, indicate left, off and indicate right. This made it very easy to switch them off. Now when you want to manually switch off the indicator it's very easy to to go too far and start indicating in the opposite direction. The only way to know what position they're in is then to look down at the lights on the dashboard. It's seems a huge step backwards in usability.
snowwrestler 14y ago
Unless they're in a dogfight, airplanes do not require constant attention to the outside world. That's why autopilots and drones are technologies that have been available in the aerospace industry for years, but are just now getting good enough to consider in cars. Also consider the amount of training that goes into becoming a fighter pilot, vs. learning to drive a car. Powerful interfaces are complex and require a lot of training to manage properly under stress--which is when it is most important to do it right. That said, modern cars do have a lot of controls on the steering wheel: all the typical blinkers, brights, horn, etc. and now often radio controls, cruise control, telephone Bluetooth controls, even gear shifting paddles. HUD has been tried in cars before, but never caught on. Drivers tended to find it more distracting than helpful. Most of the information for driving does not need to be so..."contextual", the way that, say, a missile targeting system does. Anything that intercedes itself directly between the driver's eyes and the outside world could be dangerous. I do agree with you that the touchscreens in the dash are frickin awful UI design. I think they are like the "store" setting on LCD TVs--their main job is to look cool in the showroom.

jeremyarussell 14y ago

I dug this up from the uspto website. http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week20/OG/html/1378-3/US08179375-20120515.html http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week20/OG/html/1378-3... Go to the full text and then the images area and you get to see more detailed diagrams.