Detection Threshold of Audio Haptic Asynchrony in a Driving Context

TL;DR

This study determines the detection threshold for audio-haptic asynchrony in driving, revealing that drivers perceive asynchrony outside -75 ms to 110 ms, with audio leading being more noticeable.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of audio-haptic asynchrony detection thresholds in a driving simulation context.

Findings

Detection threshold ranges from -75 ms to 110 ms.

Audio leading stimuli are perceived at lower latency thresholds.

Results align with previous research on latency perception.

Abstract

In order to provide perceptually accurate multimodal feedback during driving situations, it is vital to understand the threshold at which drivers are able to recognize asyncrony between multiple incoming Stimuli. In this work, we investigated and report the \textit{detection threshold} (DT) of asynchrony between audio and haptic feedback, in the context of a force feedback steering wheel. We designed the experiment to loosely resemble a driving situation where the haptic feedback was provided through a steering wheel (\textit{Sensodrive}), while the accompanying audio was played through noise cancelling headphones. Both feedbacks were designed to resemble rumble strips, that are generally installed on the side of major roadways as a safety tool. The results indicate that, for $50\%$ of the participants, asynchrony was detectable outside the range of -75 ms and 110 ms, where the former is related to perceiving audio before haptic and vice versa for the latter. We were also able to concur with previous studies, which state that latency is perceivable at a lower threshold when audio precedes haptic stimuli.