Development of an instrumented vehicle with augmented reality (AR) for driver performance evaluation

Observing drivers' behaviours by reproducing traffic accidents and conflict situations is important for developing advanced driver assistance systems. For this purpose, an instrumented vehicle, named the JARI-ARV (Japan Automobile Research Institute - Augmented Reality Vehicle), was developed to reproduce realistic traffic accident and conflict scenarios without endangering the driver. In this study, we examined acceptability and controllability in the following cases: a right turn and encounter with a pedestrian by comparing the JARI-ARV with a normal (unaltered) same model vehicle. Results of the experiment indicated that drivers tend to react to virtual traffic participants in the same way as driving a normal vehicle. Applicability of the JARI-ARV for human factor research was confirmed.