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Wim van Winsum www.stsoftware.nl Tel: +31 50 5778768 Fax: +31 50 5775835 info@stsoftware.nl
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What are Event Based Driver Performance measures Why are they among the most important measures of driver performance Time-to-line crossing (TLC) is discussed as an example, but the same arguments also applies to other Event Based Driver Performance measures It is concluded that a detailed geometrical road-network representation is a prerequisite for measuring Event Based Driver Performance measures
PART 2: Dutch research simulator platform as an illustration 5) 6) Creation of logical and graphical databases by a common source Illustration of TLC measurements with the platform software
Examples are then TLC (time-to-line crossing), TTI (time-tointersection) and TTC (time-to-collision)
TTO (time-toobject)
Behavioural response
Event based driver performance variables measure how drivers control safety margins. Another example of an important driver performance variable that reflects a safety margin is Time Headway (THW), although it is not event based.
Measures of how drivers control their safety margins are then important performance variables that must be measured in driving simulators.
In practice, however, driving simulators are often unable to provide adequate measurements of these important variables
This requires an accurate and highly detailed logical (mathematical) representation of the roadnet together with an accurate vehicle dynamics model
Because a logical representation of the road database is unavailable in most simulators, an approximation of TLC is often used that wrongly assumes that the vehicle will maintain the same lateral velocity: TLC_1 = (lateral distance)/(lateral velocity). This approximation gives very different results compared to the real TLC
In addition, lateral distance often is computed with respect to the polygon edges of the graphical database. In the graphical database, road curves are often simulated as a sequence of straight edges that connect with a small angle. This results in sharp spikes in the TLC_1 signal that can only be removed after filtering
Because of these factors, TLC measurements in driving simulators are often unreliable
To compute the time-relations between the vehicle and other objects a few things are required of driving simulator scenarios: 1 accurate path prediction of the vehicle (knowledge of the dynamics of the vehicle)
accurate representation of the surroundings of the vehicle (knowledge of the immediate environment) : distance to the object along the vehicle path, dimensions and angles of the object, relevant properties of the object, like radius, position or velocity Not all simulators meet these requirements. But if these requirements are met, then variables can be measured in a simulator that are hard or even impossible to measure on the road
We have established a research driving simulator platform with Dutch universities (RU Groningen, TU Delft and TU Twente), traffic research institutes (TNO Soesterberg, SWOV) and a neuropsychological clinic (University hospital Groningen) with the following goals: 1 Common use of the same driving simulator software: the same experimental scenarios can be played on different simulators, ranging from low-end to high-end Standardization of scenario- and database formats Exchange of graphical databases and scenarios Development of tools that allow researchers to build databases and experimental scenarios by themselves
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Logical- and graphical databases must originate from a common source: StRoadDesign database designer. This ensures that both types of databases match geometrically Standardization in database formats and rendering: OpenFlighttm and OpenSceneGraph (OSG) All internal variables in the simulator software are accessible to the researcher via a scripting language Everything in the simulations is controlled by scripts: from traffic generation to datastorage and feedback generation Complexity is reduced by using autonomous agents and by letting each scenario script control itself (switch on or off as a result of a dynamic condition) Re-use of scripts
Logical database
Autonomous agents (vehicles, bicyclists, pedestrians) scan the immediate environment in the logical database Based on what they perceive, they apply a number of behavioural rules And perform an action that changes speed and lateral position And update their position in the logical database
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Conclusions
1) Event Based Driver Performance measures (or safety margins) are among the most important dependent variables in driver behaviour research Measuring these variables requires an accurate and detailed geometrical description of the road geometry (logical database) and a vehicle dynamics model of sufficient quality. Distances to other (road) objects are then computed along the projected road path. An added advantage of a logical database is that autonomous agents (vehicles, bicyclists, pedestrians) can travers the road network by references to this database The logical- and the graphical database must originate from the same source, in order to ensure that logical and graphical positions of objects match, which is a core property of our design tool The collective use of the same road networks and driver performance measures by research institutes will enable comparability of results and exchange of scenarios
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