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Publikation

Multimodal Input in the Car, Today and Tomorrow

Christian Müller; Garrett Weinberg
In: IEEE Multimedia, Vol. 18, No. 1, Pages 98-102, IEEE Computer Society, 1/2011.

Zusammenfassung

After a surge in horrific automobile accidents in which distracted driving was proven to be a factor, 38 US states have enacted texting-while-driving bans. While nearly everyone can agree that pecking out a love note on a tiny mobile phone keypad while simultaneously trying to operate a vehicle is bad idea, what about the other activities that we perform on a day-to-day basis using the electronic devices either built in or brought in to our cars? Finding a nearby restaurant acceptable to the vegetarian in the back set? Locating and queuing up that new album you downloaded to your iPod? This article offers a brief overview of multimodal (speech, touch, gaze, etc.) input theory as it pertains to common in-vehicle tasks and devices. After a brief introduction, we walk through a sample multimodal interaction, detailing the steps involved and how information necessary to the interaction can be obtained by combining input modes in various ways. We also discuss how contemporary in-vehicle systems take advantage of multimodality (or fail to do so), and how the capabilities of such systems might be broadened in the future via clever multimodal input mechanisms.