Loss of vision significantly impairs mobility, with blind individuals often relying on sighted individuals or public transportation to get around. Self-driving vehicles could significantly improve the mobility of blind people, but current legislation often requires a legal driver to be present in the vehicle who can take over in case of a malfunction. To enable blind people to eventually use a self-driving car independently, we present a steering interface that allows for steering a vehicle using haptic cues. User studies with six blind and sighted subjects identify what accuracy is required and possible using our interface to steer a vehicle on a track using a simulator. We investigate whether driving experience affects haptic steering performance and perform a qualitative study into the usability of our haptic steering interface.

Glare significantly diminishes visual perception, and is a significant cause of traffic accidents. Existing haptic automotive interfaces typically indicate when and in which direction to steer, but they don't convey how much to steer, as a driver typically determines this using visual feedback. We present a novel haptic interface that relies on an intelligent vehicle position system to indicate when, in which direction and how far to steer, as to facilitate steering without any visual feedback. Our interface may improve driving safety when a driver is temporarily blinded, for example, due to glare or fog. Three user studies were performed, the first study tries to understand driving using visual feedback, the second study evaluates two different haptic encoding mechanisms with no visual feedback present, and a third study evaluates the supplemental effect of haptic feedback when used in conjunction with visual feedback. Studies show this interface to allow for blind steering in small curves and that it can improve a driver's lane keeping ability when combined with visual feedback.