Abstract
Many aspects of human factors applied to automotive engineering design are fairly well understood. For example, the ergonomics of the cabin and the associated driver-vehicle interactions linked to comfort and control issues have long been key elements of successful vehicle model development. More recently, this understanding of human factors design has been extended to embrace the growing provision of information and communications systems which add to the driver workload.
In contrast, however, the aspects of driver-vehicle interactions which are linked to the often complex, multidirectional dynamics associated with the whole vehicle behaviour have proved somewhat more difficult to quantify reliably. This dynamic behaviour may usefully be broken down into categories linked to particular directions of motion e.g. handling (lateral/yaw), ride (vertical / pitch / roll), driveability and braking (longitudinal).
The paper reviews the current state of the art in the correlations between driver subjective evaluations and objective measured data in these areas of dynamics. Then, it focuses specifically on vehicle handling and presents new results obtained from recent measurements at MIRA. In the subsequent analysis, fresh insight into our understanding of human factors assessment of vehicle handling performance is put forward. And finally, some speculative observations are made about the future potential for designing into the vehicle a set of desirable driver feel properties - which are becoming more commonly referred to as "Brand DNA" - in a software-based virtual proving ground environment.