Yusaku Takeda

Windshield Frame Shape and Awareness of the External World While Driving an Automobile

The vehicle windshield is supported and framed by the hood, roof, and pillars, which occlude the driver’s view of the outside. It has been previously shown that awareness of the external world changes according to differences in windshield shape. This directly affects the drivability of a vehicle. Thus, the windshield shape must be designed by considering driver’s visual performance so that it can be balanced with other performance measures such as weight and roominess to design the optimal cockpit. Visual performance during driving is affected by (1) bottom-up attention and (2) top-down attention, and (3) selection between them. This study focuses on Itti and Koch’s visual saliency that attracts bottom-up attention as a visual scene changes in shape and color around front windshield frame during driving. This paper aims to quantify the relationships between drivers’ gaze movements and visual saliency.