Abstract
KEYWORDS:
steering process, handling, driver behaviour, computer simulation, experiment
ABSTRACT:
The traffic active safety is directly influenced by the drivers' actions. In this circumstance, to understand the way that the driver judges and reacts in normal or extreme situations can be vary useful for the traffic safety responsible factors: vehicle manufacturers, road constructors, drivers, transportation staff.
This document proposes a computer model that contains two feedback circuits (one for the touch sense, turned on by the un-commanded steering wheel rotation, and other for the visual sense, initiated by the deviation from the trajectory) and an anticipative module, based on the driver experience. The driver actions are transferred as inputs to a sub-module which determine the current car kinematics. The car response is computed considering possible perturbations as wind gust, road inclination, effects of tractive or braking forces.
Changing the model parameters (gain, reaction time, anticipation distance), the behaviour of different driver types was simulated.
Data records, obtained from sensors in different road tests, was used for model validation. The good concordance between theoretical and experimental results demonstrates that the model can be used to simulate the handling behaviour of the vehicle-driver system.