Research has shown that head-mounted displays can produce greater presence in a virtual environment than direct-view displays. It has also been shown that after vision, haptic response is one of the most important inputs for humans in a simulated environment. This research was designed primarily to determine the performance differences associated with different display types, levels of steering force feedback, and the interaction between these two factors in a low-to-medium fidelity, PC-based driving simulator. Participants drove on a simulated driving course during which both objective driving performance data were collected (lane deviation, speed control, steering wheel angle variance, and time to the complete course) as well as subjective self-report measures including questionnaires designed to tap immersive tendencies and perceived levels of presence. Results of the research show that the use of a head-mounted display can significantly impact driving performance in terms of speed control and lane deviation. Speed control was significantly improved (increased) and lane deviation was significantly improved (decreased) in three of the four roadway segments with the use of an HMD. Results for active steering force feedback, however, showed a significantly negative effect on driving performance with an increase in average lane deviation. Descriptive statistics showed that participants preferred the HMD and D-V equally and all but one participant preferred active steering force feedback. / Master of Science

Work title: The response of the visual system when driving a car in real conditions and in a simulator during a parallel motor task. Aims: To implement a laboratory measurement in a driving simulator and in real conditions during a parallel motor task. To track the response of the visual system during the task and to determine potential differences in the response of the visual system and in the speed in the simulator and in the real car environment. Methods: The laboratory measurement was realized in a driving simulator OCTAVIA II. The measurement in real conditions was realized in Škoda Octavia as well. The eye-tracking method was used to track the drivers` eyes. Results: In the simulator the more experienced driver managed to do the parallel motor task within a shorter period of time than the less experienced driver, lower frequency of looks at the radio during the tasks with the more experienced driver was not proved. There was not an evidence of more balanced speed during the drive with the more experienced driver in the simulator. On the average the driver spent shorter time doing the tasks in the real environment than in the simulator and the total number of looks at the radio was lower. The speed of the drive in the real environment was lower than the speed in the simulator. Key words:...

The objective of the study was to gain in-depth knowledge of speed relationships for urban streets. The speed characteristics were examined using a number of methods for data collection. Throughout the research, a special focus was placed on capturing the influence on driver speed of interactions with pedestrians, cyclists and other road users, called sidefriction events in this study. First, driver behaviour and travel time data was collected from field and driving simulator studies for a range of street types and traffic conditions. The collected data was used to calibrate a microscopic traffic simulation model. Production runs with this model were performed for various traffic conditions. Second, aggregated speed data was collected at the link level, i.e. the macro level, for three street types. In combination with street site variables, speed and flow data was analysed using multiple regression techniques with space mean speed as dependent variable. This analysis was also performed for average travel speed data produced by microscopic traffic simulation. Two central results were attained and utilized for the model development: - In-depth knowledge of which factors influence speed choice on urban street links with minor intersections, on a micro and macro level. - A comprehensive research methodology for study of speed characteristics on urban streets in which the knowledge gained at the micro and macro level was applied. Results from the micro study showed that Average number of crossing pedestrians and Traffic flow had significant impact on average travel speed (R2=0.91). Results from the macro study performed for three street types showed that Street function and Number of lanes also had a high degree of explanation (R2 close to 0.70). The variables Separated bicycle lane, Roadside parking permitted and Number of minor intersections per 1 km were significant for some of the street types modelled in the macro study. The variables Ratio of through vehicles and Gender of the driver were also investigated and were found not to influence space-mean speed. The macro study demonstrated that speed choice and driver behaviour were consistent for each street type investigated regardless of city type and population size. The speed-flow relationships of the micro model for an urban street type showed good agreement with the macro model for traffic flows in the upper range. In conclusion, the research effort showed that the included side-friction variables added explanatory value to the estimation of speed, and thus can enhance the knowledge of traffic impacts of different urban street designs. / QC 20100630

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier le comportement de traversée d'intersection en conduite automobile sous l'angle des actions visuellement guidées. Dans l'introduction, nous montrons que les principales études portant sur la traversée d'intersection se sont focalisées sur les processus de jugement perceptif ; or nous montrons que la compréhension de cette activité pourrait être affinée en utilisant les concepts de la théorie de la perception directe et ceux issus du contrôle continu. Notre revue de questions nous conduit à rapprocher la tâche de traversée d'intersection à l'intérieur d'un créneau libre du trafic à celle d'interception de cible se déplaçant horizontalement. Or, dans le cadre des tâches d'interception, il a été démontré que la stratégie d'angle de relèvement constant (i.e., Constant Bearing Angle, CBA) a un fort pouvoir explicatif vis-à-vis des données expérimentales. Nous avons donc tiré partie des outils de simulation automobile pour tester la plausibilité de l'utilisation d'une telle stratégie par les conducteurs. Dans le premier chapitre expérimental, nous montrons qu'il est légitime d'étudier le couplage perception-action dans ce type de tâche et que les conducteurs adoptent des régulations comportementales proches de celles observées dans une tâche d'interception de mobile. Le second chapitre expérimental nous permet de mettre en évidence l'utilisation conjointe par les conducteurs d'informations relatives au créneau du trafic (supports globaux) et aux véhicules (supports locaux). / This Ph.D. project aims at studying drivers' road crossing behaviour under the perspective of visually guided actions. In the introduction, we present that former studies related to road crossing behaviour mainly focused on perceptual judgement processes. However, we demonstrate that this kind of task would be better understood with theories from the ecological approach of perception and motor control studies. Our literature review lead us to make a bridge between the task of crossing a road inside a free moving traffic gap and the task of intercepting an horizontally moving target. In this regard, it has been demonstrated that the Constant Bearing Angle strategy (CBA) has a high explanatory power in respect to experimental data. We used driving simulation tools in order to assess the hypothesis of the use of bearing angle based strategy by drivers. In the first experimental chapter, we show that studying perceptual-motor coupling in this task is relevant and that observed behaviour is close to taht observed in horizontally moving target interception tasks. The second experimental chapter demonstrates that drivers' behaviour relies both on visual information related to the moving gap (global contribution) and that related to the independent vehicles (local contributions). In the last experimental chapter, we evidenced that drivers' behaviour does not exclusively rely on the changes of the bearing angle but also on traffic vehicles' optical expansion. We conclude on how our results shed new light on former results obtained with perceptual-judgements based methodology.

This work deals with driving skills training problematics using a driving school 3D simulator, which monitors the observance of road traffic rules. Existing simulators are categorized by characteristics and described. The text contains a list of implemented rules and a summary of suitable tools. The resultant application is based on the Unreal engine and the text describes the various stages of development.

Trots påkallande av fri väg med blåljus och siren, kan utryckningsfordon ha svårt att ta sig fram i trafiken. Detta då civila förare inte alltid lyckas upptäcka utryckningsfordonen, bland annat på grund av dåliga ljus-, väder-, eller vägförhållanden. Denna studie undersökte därför huruvida meddelanden som varnar för ankommande utryckningsfordon (EVA-varningar), för bilförare med olika körerfarenhet samt tidigare vana av avancerade förarstödsystem (ADAS), påverkar lämnandet av fri väg. Resultatet visade att förarna som mottog EVA-varningar, i genomsnitt, lämnade fri väg tidigare än de som inte mottog några varningar. Förarna med låg ADAS-vana var dock mindre positiva till att vilja mottaga EVA-varningar i framtiden, även om de upplevde att varningarna förbättrade deras körbeteende. Utifrån resultatet verkar EVA-varningar vara ett bra komplement för att påkalla fri väg, där varken körerfarenhet eller ADAS-vana verkar spela någon roll för förståelsen av EVA-systemet. Vidare har tidigare studier visat att olika bilförares attityd gentemot utryckningsfordon kan påverka viljan att lämna fri väg. Därmed undersökte denna studie även bilförares upplevelse, beteende och attityd gentemot utryckande ambulans och polis. Resultatet visade att förarna hade en mer accepterande attityd gentemot utryckande ambulanser än vad de hade mot poliser. Exempelvis instämde deltagarna i högre grad med att det är viktigare att lämna fri väg till ambulanser, att ambulansens utryckningsärenden är mer brådskande, och att det är mer okej att ambulanser bryter mot trafikregler än om polisen gör det. Däremot var alla eniga om att fri väg alltid måste lämnas till både ambulans och polis. / Even though emergency vehicles use lights and sirens to demand surrounding traffic to move over, civilian drivers sometimes have trouble detecting them. This could be due to poor light, weather, or road conditions. Therefore, this study examined whether warning messages for approaching emergency vehicles (EVA-warnings), for drivers with different driving experiences and previous experience of advanced driving assistant system (ADAS), can facilitate moving over. The results showed that drivers who received EVA-warnings moved over earlier than those who did not receive any warnings. However, drivers with low ADAS-experience were less positive about the idea of receiving EVA-warnings in the future, even though they felt the warnings improved their driving. Overall, EVA-warnings worked as a good complement to encourage drivers to move over, where neither driving experience nor previous ADAS-experience seems to affect the understanding of the EVA-system. Furthermore,previous studies have shown that different attitudes towards emergency vehicles can affect the willingness to move over. Therefore, this study examined drivers' experience, behavior, and attitude towards ambulances and police vehicles. The results showed that drivers had a more accepting attitude towards ambulances compared to police vehicles. The participants agreed to a greater extent that it is more important to move over for ambulances, that the ambulance's emergency matters are more urgent, and that it is more okay for ambulances to break traffic rules in comparison with police vehicles. However, everyone agreed that one must always move over for both ambulances and police vehicles.

Modelling and rendering natural phenomena, such as rain, is an important aspect of creating a realistic driving simulator. Rain is a crucial issue when driving in the real world as it for instance obstructs the driver’s vision. The difficulty is to implement it in a visually appealing way while simultaneously making it look realistic and keeping the computational cost low. In this report, a GPGPU (general-purpose computing on graphical processing units) based approach is presented where the final product is a rain simulation rendered onto a 2D texture, which can then be applied to a surface. The simulated raindrops interact with gravity, wind, a windshield wiper as well as with each other, and are then used to distort the background behind them in a convincing manner. The simulation takes into account multiple physical properties of raindrops and is shown to be suitable to run in real-time. The result is presented in form of a visual demonstration. In conclusion, even though the final simulation is still in its first iteration, it clearly highlights what can be accomplished by utilizing the GPU and the benefits of using a texture-based approach. The appropriate simulation approach will however always depend on the characteristics of the problem and the limitations of the hardware.

No description available.

Crashes categorized as running red light or left turning are most likely to occur at signalized intersections and resulted in substantial severe injuries and property damages. This dissertation mainly focused on these two types of vehicle crashes and the research methodology involved several perspectives. To examine the overall characteristics of red-light running and left-turning crashes, firstly, this study applied 1999-2001 Florida traffic crash data to investigate the accident propensity of three aspects of risk factors related to traffic environments, driver characteristics, and vehicle types. A quasi-induced exposure concept and statistical techniques including classification tree model and multiple logistic regression were used to perform this analysis. Secondly, the UCF driving simulator was applied to test the effect of a proposed new pavement marking countermeasure which purpose is to reduce the red-light running rate at signalized intersections. The simulation experiment results showed that the total red-light running rate with marking is significantly lower than that without marking. Moreover, deceleration rate of stopping drivers with marking for the higher speed limit are significantly less than those without marking. These findings are encouraging and suggesting that the pavement marking may result in safety enhancement as far as right-angle and rear-end traffic crashes at signalized intersections. Thirdly, geometric models to compute sight distances of unprotected left-turns were developed for different signalized intersection configurations including a straight approach leading to a straight one, a straight approach leading to a curved one, and a curved approach leading to a curved one. The models and related analyses can be used to layout intersection design or evaluate the sight distance problem of an existing intersection configuration to ensure safe left-turn maneuvers by drivers.

Driving safety has been an issue of great concern in the United States throughout the years. According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis (NCSA), in 2003 alone, there were 6,267,000 crashes in the U.S. from which 1,915,000 were injury crashes, including 38,764 fatal crashes and 43,220 human casualties. The U.S. Department of Transportation spends millions of dollars every year on research that aims to improve roadway safety and decrease the number of traffic collisions. In spring 2002, the Center for Advanced Traffic System Simulation (CATSS), at the University of Central Florida, acquired a sophisticated reconfigurable driving simulator. This simulator, which consists of a late model truck cab, or passenger vehicle cab, mounted on a motion base capable of operation with six degrees of freedom, is a great tool for traffic studies. Two applications of the simulator are to study the contribution of Light Truck Vehicles (LTVs) to potential rear-end collisions, the most common type of crashes, which account for about a third of the U.S. traffic crashes, and the involvement of Larger Size Vehicles (LSVs) in red light running. LTVs can obstruct horizontal visibility for the following car driver and has been a major issue, especially at unsignalized intersections. The sudden stop of an LTV, in the shadow of the blindness of the succeeding car driver, may deprive the following vehicle of a sufficient response time, leading to high probability of a rear-end collision. As for LSVs, they can obstruct the vertical visibility of the traffic light for the succeeding car driver on signalized intersection producing a potential red light running for the latter. Two sub-scenarios were developed in the UCF driving simulator for each the vertical and horizontal visibility blockage scenarios. The first sub-scenario is the base sub-scenario for both scenarios, where the simulator car follows a passenger car, and the second sub-scenario is the test sub-scenario, where the simulator car follows an LTV for the horizontal visibility blockage scenario and an LSV for the vertical visibility blockage scenario. A suggested solution for the vertical visibility blockage of the traffic light problem that consisted of adding a traffic signal pole on the right side of the road was also designed in the driving simulator. The results showed that LTVs produce more rear-end collisions at unsignalized intersections due to the horizontal visibility blockage and following car drivers' behavior. The results also showed that LSVs contribute significantly to red light running on signalized intersections and that the addition of a traffic signal pole on the right side of the road reduces the red light running probability.