Should fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs) be designed inclusively and accessibly, independence will be transformed for millions of people experiencing transportation-limiting disabilities worldwide. Although FAVs hold promise to improve efficient transportation without intervention, a truly accessible experience must enable user input, for all people, in many driving scenarios (e.g., to alter a route or pull over during an emergency). Therefore, this paper explores desires for control in FAVs among (n=23) people who are blind and visually impaired. Results indicate strong support for control across a battery of driving tasks, as well as the need for multimodal information. These findings inspired the design and evaluation of a novel multisensory interface leveraging mid-air gestures, audio, and haptics. All participants successfully navigated driving scenarios using our gestural-audio interface, reporting high ease-of-use. Contributions include the first inclusively designed gesture set for FAV control and insight regarding supplemental haptic and audio cues.

This work presents a novel ultrasonic haptic interface to improve nonvisual perception and situational awareness in applications such as fully autonomous vehicles. User study results (n=14) suggest comparable performance with the dynamic ultrasonic stimuli versus a control using static embossed stimuli. The utility of the ultrasonic interface is demonstrated with a prototype autonomous small-scale robot vehicle using intersection abstractions. These efforts support the application of ultrasonic haptics for improving nonvisual information access in autonomous transportation with strong implications for people who are blind and visually impaired, accessibility, and human-in-the-loop decision making.