EcoSonic: Towards an Auditory Display supporting a fuel-efficient driving style

Jan Hammerschmidt, René Tünnermann, Thomas Hermann

Conference on Sonification of Health and
Environmental Data (SoniHED 2014)

Summary
In order to support drivers in adopting a more fuel efficient driving style, there currently exists a range of fuel economy displays, providing drivers feedback on instantaneous and long-term fuel consumption. While these displays rely almost completely on visual components for conveying relevant information, we argue that there are significant benefits in using auditory interfaces for providing feedback while driving,. We review existing literature and discuss various design strategies for auditory displays that are applicable for supporting a fuel-efficient driving style. Exploring one of these design strategies, we furthermore introduce several prototypical sonification designs.
Sonification Examples
The sonification examples are recordings of three (similar) driving-sessions, each employing a different sonification design.
- S1 (mp3, 0.97M): Fuel consumption is represented by a sequence of grains, with each grain signalling the expenditure of a small amount of fuel.
- S2 (mp3, 1.48M): The relative fuel consumption (i.e. the consumption per metre) is mapped onto the pitch of a (filtered) noise signal. In consequence, strong accelerations, or for instance driving fast on low gear becomes highly salient as high-pitched noise.
- S3 (mp3, 0.97M): This sonification of fuel consumption uses a combination of the two preceeding designs: It signals the expenditure of a small amount of fuel with a grain, whose pitch is controlled by the relative consumption.

Contact
Jan Hammerschmidt