Adaptive Auditory Alerts for Smart In-Vehicle Interfaces

Abstract

Missing a message from an in-vehicle device can range in severity from annoying at best to dangerous at worst. The in-cab auditory environment can vary spontaneously, making some volume levels too loud while rendering others too quiet. It is in the best interest of system designers, both from a safety and user experience perspective, to ensure that users are able to adequately hear alerts, and that drivers do not have to alter their gaze or attention during a visually and attentionally demanding task such as driving. To this end, we propose a system for dynamically tracking the background noise intensity level immediately prior to alert presentation in order to present an alert at an appropriate loudness. Furthermore, we evaluated the proposed system across both behavioral (accuracy and reaction time) and subjective (questionnaire results) measures. Behavioral results showed that while the proposed system increased recognition in one noise condition (background music), it also led to slower responses in two other noise conditions (windows-down and windows-up noise).