Where Does Distraction End And Reality Begin?

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

So, will this MIT-developed “virtual dashboard” render that car you’re about to hit? After all, a three-dimensional representation of the world on your dashboard seems like it would be at least as eye-catching as… you know, reality. And, believe it or not, according to PopSci this is actually a development of a program that was determined to be too distracting. This system, named AIDA 2.0, was developed from

a little robotic dashboard companion called AIDA (for Affective Intelligent Driving Agent), an MIT creation that essentially read a driver’s facial expressions to gauge mood and inferred route and destination preferences through social interaction with the driver. Apparently that was deemed too distracting, so now MIT is back with AIDA 2.0, which swaps the dashboard robot for a massive 3-D interactive map that covers the entire dashboard–because that’s not distracting at all.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Slow kills Slow kills on May 08, 2011

    Why is a 3-D portrayal of every single building/skyscraper in the city needed? For that matter, why do footpaths in the park matter when driving outside the park?

  • David C. Holzman David C. Holzman on May 08, 2011

    that is just way too much effing information for the brain to have to filter out. What a nutty idea.

  • Type57SC Type57SC on May 08, 2011

    That seems to turn the screen in advance of the turn. That's a bit strange, especially since there's ususally a bit of GPS lag to the screen. I like the idea of making navs more easy to understand exactly where you are and which street or exit ramp they are talking about but this doesn't seem to do that much. this would be really distracting without really being helpful. How about just a projected arrow HID without the location social networking BS for AIDA 3.0?

    • Sam Hall Sam Hall on May 09, 2011

      "That seems to turn the screen in advance of the turn. " Worse, the map display gives the impression of turning the opposite direction. That would certainly cause lane departures and sudden swerves in the middle of busy intersections, and I would think it would be tough to get used to even after using it for awhile. Visualizing the surrounding objects is a handy way to keep track of where you are relative to your destination, but in the video it also comes with, seemingly, search results including restaurant reviews and facebook links. Completely worthless and amazingly distracting. This is a good effort, but augmented reality needs to be an overlay, not a separate screen to look at.

  • Russycle Russycle on May 09, 2011

    I can't remember the last time I saw something so incredibly cool that was also such an incredibly bad idea. Off the charts bad.

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