Force-enabled TouchPad in Cars: Improving Target Selection using Absolute Input

Current automotive interfaces rely heavily on touchscreen interfaces which leverage simple and intuitive direct touch interaction. Since input and output are co-located, displays have to be positioned within hand's reach. When the display is outside the reach envelope, a touchpad has been used as a control device. Current implementation of touchpads in cars rely on a relative input method that requires a visual cursor and is known to cause distraction from primary driving task. Newer touchpads with force sensing ability are getting introduced in notebook computers. We propose to use a force-enabled touchpad with absolute mapping for target selection. We performed a controlled experiment as a first step towards assessing whether absolute mapped force input target selection performance can be comparable to direct touch input. Results show that target selection performance is not significantly different from direct touch input making a case for force-enabled touchpad usage in scenarios where the display is outside the reach envelope.