Benjamin J Chihak

Investigating Huds in Specialty Vehicles

Currently, several technologies are being integrated into a single system that provides the driver of a specialty vehicle with a virtual representation of the view out the windshield via a Head Up Display. As part of the development of this system, we are exploring human factors issues in a series of alternating simulation experiments and field studies. Here, we discuss a simulation experiment and a field study. In the simulation experiment, we compared the effectiveness of lane departure warnings given in three modalities—visual, auditory, and tactile (via the drivers seat). In the field study, we used a snowplow equipped with a Head Up Display, a Differential Global Positioning System, and digital geo-spatial databases. The participants were snowplow operators. The sessions that they participated were treated as a knowledge acquisition sessions. The information obtained during in this field study feed back into the next simulation stage of the program.