Employing Natural Finger Positioning Strategy for Improving Blind-Positioning of Steering Wheel Mounted Switches

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to avoid off-road glances of drivers while operating steering wheel mounted switches. However, a large number of switches on multi-functional steering wheel give rise to difficulties in memorability and finger-reaching and require hand-eye coordination. The ideation and prototyping process is as follows. Firstly, we integrated three directional entry sets into one, accompany with a function mode switching button for circulating selections of “radio control mode”, “cruise control mode” and “digital dashboard display control mode”. Secondly, we employed natural finger positioning (NFP) strategy and introduced multi-finger pull gesture NFP device for more effective blind-positioning movement of controlling directional entry keysets. Thirdly, to avoid function mode confusion, the “voice prompt upon key operation” is provided and proved to be much effective in the feasibility test. It allowed subjects to acknowledge the status of function mode timely and reduce operation errors.