Kenji Masuda

DRIVERS' VISUAL BEHAVIOR AS AFFECTED BY STOPPING MANEUVER

This study investigates the visual behaviour of novice and experienced drivers with three tasks when the stop line disappears from a drivers view before he/she performs a stopping manoeuver. The tasks were stopping right in front of the stop line, (a) after travelling in a straight line, (b) after pulling over to the left line, and (c) after pulling over to the right line. The results showed that the range of horizontal fixation locations for the experienced drivers was wider than that for the novice drivers and that the experienced drivers looked closer in front of the car than the novice drivers. These results suggest that the strategies of visual search for the novice drivers were critically concerned with the vehicles direction of travel under the conditions of high driving tasks.(a) for the covering abstract of the conference see IRRD 813089.

Effect of non-linearity on flutter of automobiles

Flutter is not a simple phenomenon derived from non-linearity of the tires cornering characteristics or existence of the tire unbalanced mass, but rather is a compound dynamic phenomenon. In the experiment, an interesting beat phenomenon was found, which was derived from the coexistence of forced vibration and self-excited vibrations. Consequently, a deeper understanding was obtained concerning the effect of play and friction on the flutter of steering system. This study explained flutter phenomenon by using mathematical model for driver/vehicle system.