Distract-R was developed by Dario Salvucci at Drexel University with funding from the National Science Foundation and Ford Motor Company. The motivation and theoretical developments behind Distract-R are described in detail in the following article:

Salvucci, D. D. (2009). Rapid prototyping and evaluation of in-vehicle interfaces. ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, 16, 9:1-9:33.