Uni- and Bimodal Threat Cueing with Vibrotactile and 3D Audio Technologies in a Combat Vehicle

Abstract

An experiment investigated uni- and bimodal cueing of horizontal threat directions to the driver of the Combat Vehicle 90 (CV 90). 3D audio in headphones or tactile vibration onto the torso, or both in combination were utilized for threat cueing. Ten male CV 90 drivers from the Swedish Army Combat School were required to turn the vehicle toward the threat as quickly and accurate as possible. Each driver handled 45 threats in total. Each of five threat directions was presented three times for each of the three threat cueing conditions. The results show that the drivers had good overall performance, albeit the 3D audio needs improvement with regard to front - back confusion if not used with tactile cueing. That is, the 3D audio generated greater localization errors and reaction times with threats straight behind the vehicle compared with the tactile and the 3D audio/tactile combination, respectively.