Evaluation of Driver-vehicle Matching using Neck Muscle Activity and Vehicle Dynamics

Objective measurement of a car driver’s feeling has been a subject of automobile researches. In the present study, we aimed at quantifying the matching between the physiological response of a driver and the vehicle motion. Assuming that the performance of a head stabilization mechanism, the vestibulo-collic reflex, affects driving feeling, we recorded the activity of neck muscles that help maintain the head position. Electromyograms (EMGs) were recorded from the sternocleidomastoid muscles (SCM) using active electrodes and a compact amplifier. Vehicle acceleration and gas pedal movement were recorded with small accelerometers. Subjects were required to perform straight-line acceleration. Four road cars with different characteristics were used. EMG signals were filtered, fullwave rectified and averaged across trials. Main results are summarized as follows. First, the EMG response of a driver’s neck muscle depended not only on vehicle acceleration but on its time derivative, jerk. A quantitative analysis showed that, for the data obtained with the four cars, the EMG profile can be reproduced by a linear sum of acceleration and jerk. The correlation coefficient, an index of goodness of matching, ranged from ~0.8 to ~0.95. Second, our analysis indicated that the relationship between the muscle response and the vehicle motion can be characterized by two parameters: the optimal weight for the jerk term and the optimal time lag. The current study proposes a method for characterizing a physiological response of a driver to dynamic vehicle motion. It remains to be investigated whether these parameters are related to the driving feeling.