Development and evaluation of a prototype communication navigator for the driving environment

The progress in mobile multimedia devices has made it easier to conduct mob ile multimedia communication while driving. The authors have conceived a co mmunication navigator for the driving environment, which is designed to ens ure safe driving during multimedia communication. The communication navigat or is intended to provide safety without sacrificing comfort in communicati on, by controlling multimedia communication on the basis of the state of th e driving environment. To design the navigator, it was necessary to identif y a control parameter and select the optimal threshold for it. We found tha t steering operation could be an important indicator of hazardous driving s ituations. We developed a prototype system to confirm empirically the valid ity of the selected indicator and its threshold. The results obtained from the prototype system were compared with the data collected in real driving on the road. We then equipped the prototype with a communication navigator for the driving environment, which controls multimedia communication based on movements of the steering wheel. Experiments were conducted with test su bjects to verify that steering operation was a useful parameter for control . The experimental results showed that the communication navigator is three times as effective as hands-free equipment in reducing the collision proba bility. (C) 2000 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 84(1): 12-20, 20 01.