A steering task can be considered to be some form of a
choice response task, i.e., providing a particular input based
on a certain stimulus. Various studies with subjects performing
choice response tasks have shown that a stimulus represented
in multiple modalities simultaneously can be detected
at lower thresholds, faster, and more accurately than when
information is provided separately in each modality [23, 17].
Based on these studies, one can argue that a haptic driving assistance
system that also indicates how far to steer when used
in conjunction with visual feedback, could allow a driver to
more closely follow the median of the lane than using visual
feedback alone.
Before designing a haptic interface that indicates how far to
steer, we conducted a study with the goal to better understand
how humans perform a steering task using visual feedback.