Presented at the annual Rocky Mountain Psychological Association meeting in 2009.

1. Virtually There:
A Comparison of Conventional Navigational Aids with HUD Alternatives
BEN D. SAWYER, AMIR N. AHMED, HEATHER M. MONG, AND BENJAMIN A. CLEGG
Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
Introduction Results
•Navigation information is plentiful, how to best deliver that Conditions
information to the driver in a safe and salient fashion?
•Most modern navigational aids have only digitized traditional aids; the Heads Up Display Turns
quality of driving instructions themselves has changed very little presented a series of
large green arrows. •Participants took a
•Heads up displays (HUDs), a technology frequently utilized in aviation Participants simply significantly fewer
(Crawford & Neal, 2006), has made little impact on roadway navigation drove to the next
arrow, which would number of incorrect turns
•Roadway HUDs displaying useful information, such as speed, have shrink and disappear as when driving in the HUD
shown potential benefits both in collision avoidance and navigation they approached.
condition.
(Pierowicz et al., 2000; Regan, 2004; Caird et al., 2008)
Verbal-before
the researcher gave Turn left on Atlantic
verbal turn-by-turn Road. Then turn left on
Southern Blvd. After that
street name based turn left on Rio Rancho
instructions before the Blvd…
Speeding
Experiment drive. The participant
would then follow them •A potential cost in the
Participants from memory.
HUD condition exists.
•8 from an introductory psychology course for voluntary class credit
•Current driver’s license and normal or corrected vision
Verbal-during
the researcher gave Turn left Turn left
Method sequential verbal turn
on Atla… on Sout…
•5 environments driven by participant navigating toward a goal by turn instructions as
the participant drove.
•5 navigational aid conditions tested and contrasted Turn left
on Rio R…
•5 sequential correct turns to successfully navigate each map
Measures
•Driving times and successes in reaching the goal Map-before
participants viewed a
•1collision hazard (a dog) plus multiple distracters map of the route with
•Ease of Use survey by condition directions before
beginning the drive,
•Ranking of the five navigational aids ‘easiest to most difficult to which was then
use’ before debriefing completed from Unexpected Event Detection Ease of Use
memory. •HUD showed no advantage or •A trend exists toward greater perceived
disadvantage. ease of use in the HUD condition.
Written instructions
identical to map-before,
except that participants
Discussion
were given a sheet of •The HUD condition appears to minimize driver error while tending to ease the
paper on which they subjective process of navigating
could write directions
to bring on the drive. •A GPS-based HUD could improve the way in which navigation information is
delivered and in turn potentially improve road safety
•However, HUD use appears to be associated with speeding
•Roadway HUD will soon be both technologically and economically feasible
•Further investigation into the exact benefits of HUD technology over Heads Down
Colorado State’s Driving Simulator Displays (HDD), audio cue and other navigational aids is warranted