MRDrive: An Open Source Mixed Reality Driving Simulator for Automotive User Research
This simulator provides a flexible and ecologically valid platform for HCI researchers studying in-vehicle interaction, attention, and explainability in both manual and automated driving contexts.
This paper introduces MRDrive, an open-source mixed-reality driving simulator that addresses the trade-off between ecological validity and experimental control in in-vehicle interface design. It allows users to interact with a real vehicle cabin while immersed in a virtual driving environment, demonstrated by a pilot study collecting eye-tracking and touch interaction data in an automated driving scenario.
Designing and evaluating in-vehicle interfaces requires experimental platforms that combine ecological validity with experimental control. Driving simulators are widely used for this purpose. However, they face a fundamental trade-off: high-fidelity physical simulators are costly and difficult to adapt, while virtual reality simulators provide flexibility at the expense of physical interaction with the vehicle. In this work, we present MRDrive, an open mixed-reality driving simulator designed to support HCI research on in-vehicle interaction, attention, and explainability in manual and automated driving contexts. MRDrive enables drivers and passengers to interact with a real vehicle cabin while being fully immersed in a virtual driving environment. We demonstrate the capabilities of MRDrive through a small pilot study that illustrates how the simulator can be used to collect and analyze eye-tracking and touch interaction data in an automated driving scenario. MRDRive is available at: https://github.com/ciao-group/mrdrive