Design and Implementation of a Driving Simulation Facility for the Optimization of Human-Machine Interfaces

Oakland University and the University of Michigan-Dearborn in collaboration with a team of suppliers under the leadership of Collins & Aikman have developed a fixed based driving simulator for optimizing automotive interior and interface design. The driving simulator, or Advanced Cockpit Enabler (ACE) has the capability for quick evaluation of early prototypes of driver interfaces, by exposing human test subjects to a simulated driving scenario. During the scenario, the subjects are requested to perform prototype-specific tasks, while the driving simulation system records statistical driver performance data and driver distraction information. This paper introduces the architecture and features of the simulation environment, and illustrates the capabilities by an example experiment. The architecture of the system consists of hardware, simulation software tools and data processing and report generation tools. The output of a test consists of a detailed statistical report, ready to use for performance evaluation of the early prototype. Smid/Dowd/Bhise 2 Introduction With the growing complexity of in-vehicle electronics for ride quality and comfort, the introduction of information technology and increased safety features, the driver is increasingly exposed to numerous controls and displays. This trend implies that more attention of the driver is needed for accessing the features, at the cost of paying attention to driving. The complexity of interfacing and assuring that these features do not overload the driver is critical. The variety and complexity of the driver environment has come to the point that not one design can apply common rational for the design of a good and safe interface. A design tool is needed to evaluate early prototypes of these interfaces, and to assess performance measures in terms of safety, minimum distraction, quality, and comfort. The ACE driving simulator provides just this capability. The uniqueness of this driving simulation facility is twofold. First, the agility of the driver environment configuration allows for an impressive quick turn-around time of early prototype testing, without having to re-program any of the simulator itself. Second, the system will perform a fully automatic human driver distraction test, once the prototype is installed and a scenario is configured. This means that after a brief interview, a test subject will enter the driving simulator, and after the test (approx. two hours), a complete 60-page report with the statistical test results for driver performance and task execution has been generated. Both these tasks can typically take days for other driving simulation systems to perform, hence the time and effort for a large number of prototype interfaces and test subjects. ACE Driving Simulator The ACE driving simulator is the name of the automotive interface testing and simulation laboratory that has been developed under the leadership of Collins & Aikman, and in collaboration with a partnership of automotive suppliers (Sanyo FMS Audio Sdn. Bhd., Nippon Seki International, Ltd., Douglas Autotech Corporation, Valeo Electronics, KSR International Company, and Alcoa Fujikura, Ltd.), and two universities (University of Michigan-Dearborn and Oakland University). The lab consists of several elements. It contains a fixed-base driver compartment of a vehicle, including the cluster, center-stack and vehicle driving controls (i.e. steering wheel and pedals). It also includes a customized installation of the Oakland University Driving Simulator, VVSS. A data postprocessing system has been designed to automatically analyze the recorded data and generate a report at the end of an experiment. Finally, the facility includes a generalized interface structure for attaching Smid/Dowd/Bhise 3 prototype designs to be evaluated. This interface structure allows the ACE team to plug-and-play a concept design for human driver controls and in-vehicle interfaces and evaluate its performance though a test driving scenario. Virtual driving simulation with Human-In-The-Loop (HIL) is performed by the Virtual Vehicle System Simulation (VVSS) environment, developed by Oakland University [1], [2], [3]. The VVSS has initially been designed for the purpose of designing and evaluating active suspension, traction control, active safety systems [6,7] and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications [8,9], where mathematical models of concept subsystems could be integrated and tested for its performance by an interactive subjective HIL simulation. The VVSS environment is re-configurable, and adapted to capture driving behavior, driver performance (e.g. lane deviation, variation of velocity, eye glances, etc.), and to issue audible voice commands for the prototype-critical driver distraction tasks. Please notice the terminology in the following sections, as it is defined in Table 1. The following paragraphs describe the driving simulation environment in more detail.