A Novel Approach to Sensorimotor Skill Acquisition Utilizing Sensory Substitution: A Driving Simulation Study

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the potential of sensory substitution/augmentation (SS/A) techniques for driver assistance systems in a simulated driving environment. Using a group-comparison design, we examined lane-keeping skill acquisition in a driving simulator that can provide information regarding vehicle lateral position by changing the binaural balance of auditory white noise delivered to the driver. Consequently, lane-keeping accuracy was significantly degraded when the lower visual scene (proximal part of the road) was occluded, suggesting it conveyed critical visual information necessary for lane keeping. After 40 minutes of training with auditory cueing of vehicle lateral position, lane-keeping accuracy returned to the baseline (normal driving) level. This indicates that auditory cueing can compensate for the loss of visual information. Taken together, our data suggest that auditory cueing of vehicle lateral position is sufficient for lane-keeping skill acquisition and that SS/A techniques can potentially be used for the development of driver assistance systems, particularly for situations where immediate time-sensitive actions are required in response to rapidly changing sensory information. Although this study is the first to apply SS/A techniques to driver assistance, further studies are however required to establish the generalizability of the findings to real-world settings.