Measurement and Modeling of the Effect of Sensory Conflicts on Driver Steering Control

Abstract

In previous work, a new model of driver steering control incorporating sensory dynamics was derived and used to explain the performance of drivers in a simulator with full-scale motion feedback. This paper describes further experiments investigating how drivers steer with conflicts between their visual and vestibular measurements, caused by scaling or filtering the physical motion of the simulator relative to the virtual environment. The predictions of several variations of the new driver model are compared with the measurements to understand how drivers perceive sensory conflicts. Drivers are found to adapt well in general, unless the conflict is large, in which case they ignore the physical motion and rely on visual measurements. Drivers make greater use of physical motion which they rate as being more helpful, achieving a better tracking performance. Sensory measurement noise is shown to be signal-dependent, allowing a single set of parameters to be found to fit the results of all the trials. The model fits measured linear steering behavior with an average “variance accounted for (VAF)” of 86%.

Identification and validation of a driver steering control model incorporating human sensory dynamics

“…However, it is necessary to investigate how drivers behave when there are sensory conflicts, in particular when the motion is scaled or filtered. These limitations are addressed in further work [23].…”

“…Therefore, to ensure that the drivers used their sensory systems in the simulator in the same way as they would in a real vehicle, the vehicle motion was designed to fit within the simulator limits without any scaling or filtering. (A separate set of experiments was performed to investigate and model the effect of sensory conflicts on driver steering behaviour, these are reported in [23]. )…”

Identification of a driver model incorporating sensory dynamics, with nonlinear vehicle dynamics and transient disturbances

“…The target and disturbance forcing functions used in the experiments reported in [3,4] were based on stationary filtered white noise, consistent with the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control strategy used in [2]. This is a reasonable representation of some target paths and disturbances which may be encountered during.…”

“…The model was extended in [4] to account for conflicts between visual and vestibular measurements, such as occur in a fixed-base simulator or in a moving-base simulator with limited travel. Experiments were carried out with the physical simulator motion scaled or filtered (high-pass) relative to the motion of the virtual vehicle.…”

“…Although some research has been carried out with transient disturbances [7][8][9][10][11], it appears that sensory dynamics have not been considered. Therefore the second objective of the present paper is to extend the previous experiments and simulations [3,4] to include transient targets and disturbances.…”