Abstract
From a questionnaire, it was revealed that elderly drivers were conscious of visual depression. Elderly drivers felt stress in twilight and night driving, and they selected the Night Vision System as a key assistance. Therefore, we examined a Night Vision System that is adapted for elderly drivers. First, we conducted an evaluative experiment of an existing system for elderly drivers. Most elderly drivers gave low ranks of the system because they complained about the small display and that the system alarm was activated too late to respond. From the results, we then measured the visual and the cognitive functions of elderly drivers and developed an improved night vision system using the collected data. However, the evaluative experiment showed that even the improved system couldn't provide adequate usability for the elderly drivers. Therefore we proposed a new Night Vision System for elderly drivers that creates an awareness of pedestrians by using information of both the rough position of the pedestrian and an adequately-timed alarm. This new system received high evaluations from the elderly drivers.
Keywords: Elderly drivers, Night Vision, Human-Machine-Interface