Comfort and Time Efficiency: A Roundabout Case Study

Abstract

The public acceptance of automated driving is influenced by multiple factors. Apart from safety being of top priority, comfort and time efficiency also have an impact on the popularity of automated vehicles. These two factors contradict each other as optimizing for one results in the degradation of the other. We investigate in this paper how such a multiobjective problem is approached by human drivers and by numerical optimization in the roundabout scenario, which is compact in size but complex to handle. The human drivers' behavior is first observed using naturalistic driving data. The average trajectories and distribution of peak accelerations were extracted after model-based fitting and removal of erroneous samples. The processed data is shared online as an openaccess dataset. Then, an optimization problem is formulated and solved to find the numerically optimal motion profile in terms of comfort and time efficiency. The weighted sum of travel time and discomfort is minimized. By adjusting the weight distribution, we present different motion profiles favoring optimal comfort, human-like acceleration magnitudes, and agility, respectively.

Mitigating Motion Sickness with Optimization-based Motion Planning

“…Measuring motion sickness, on the other hand, is less straightforward. We adopt the following form as is used in [25], [26]:…”

“…This study also mentioned the trade-off between time and comfort in motion planning. The trade-off problem in real traffic is investigated for a roundabout scenario where naturalistic driving data is analyzed [26]. Furthermore, an optimal planning framework has been proposed, which considers the possibility of reducing lateral accelerations with active roll motion [27].…”

3DOP: Comfort-oriented Motion Planning for Automated Vehicles with Active Suspensions

“…The speed control is governed by (12) and gives throttle and brake percentage, P T and P B , as control inputs. The desired acceleration is calculated as the sum of the forward acceleration derived from the motion plan, a x,r , and the velocity tracking error scaled by k speed .…”

“…Motion primitives generated with bounded acceleration were used in combination with the Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm to explore unstructured free space [9], but the results were not satisfactory. Several studies chose the minimization of translational accelerations as the objective while including travel time in the evaluation of a motion plan [10]- [12]. Such approaches are more commonly used for structured roads.…”

Effects of seat back height and posture on 3D vibration transmission to pelvis, trunk and head

“…Particularly in automated vehicles, motion comfort is essential (Kyriakidis, Happee and de Winter, 2015) as these vehicles are intended for spending time on work and leisure activities. Assessment of postural stabilization and comfort can be used in seat design (Papaioannou, Jerrelind, Drugge and Shyrokau, 2021) and in motion planning (Zheng, Shyrokau and Keviczky, 2021) of automated vehicles, potentially resulting in higher comfort levels.…”