Investigation of the driver’s seat that displays future vehicle motion

Abstract

Automated driving reduces the burden on the driver, however also makes it difficult for the driver to understand the current situation and predict the future movement of the vehicle. When the acceleration due to automated driving occurs without future prediction, the driver’s anxiety and discomfort are increased compared to the case in manual driving. To facilitate the prediction of the future behavior of the vehicle by the driver, this paper aims to design and evaluate a haptic interface that actuates the vehicle seat. Our system displays to the driver the movement of the vehicle a few seconds in the future, which allows the driver to make predictions and preparations. Using a driving simulator, we compared the conditions where the movement of the car was displayed in advance for the length of different time. The subjective evaluation of the driver showed that the predictability of the behavior of the vehicle were significantly increased compared to the case without display. The experiment also showed that comfortable feeling significantly decreased if the preceding display is too early.