Studying Person-Specific Pointing and Gaze Behavior for Multimodal Referencing of Outside Objects from a Moving Vehicle

TL;DR

This study examines how individual differences in pointing and gaze behaviors affect outside-object referencing from a moving vehicle, highlighting the importance of personalized multimodal interaction methods for safety and efficiency.

Contribution

It investigates the interaction between pointing and gaze modalities in dynamic driving environments and analyzes person-specific differences to inform adaptive referencing systems.

Findings

Significant behavioral differences based on object location and surroundings.

Variations in pointing and gaze durations influence referencing effectiveness.

Driving mode impacts multimodal interaction patterns.

Abstract

Hand pointing and eye gaze have been extensively investigated in automotive applications for object selection and referencing. Despite significant advances, existing outside-the-vehicle referencing methods consider these modalities separately. Moreover, existing multimodal referencing methods focus on a static situation, whereas the situation in a moving vehicle is highly dynamic and subject to safety-critical constraints. In this paper, we investigate the specific characteristics of each modality and the interaction between them when used in the task of referencing outside objects (e.g. buildings) from the vehicle. We furthermore explore person-specific differences in this interaction by analyzing individuals' performance for pointing and gaze patterns, along with their effect on the driving task. Our statistical analysis shows significant differences in individual behaviour based on object's location (i.e. driver's right side vs. left side), object's surroundings, driving mode (i.e. autonomous vs. normal driving) as well as pointing and gaze duration, laying the foundation for a user-adaptive approach.