Driving with a Head-Slaved Camera System

In a field experiment, we tested the effectiveness of a head-slaved camera system for driving an armoured vehicle under armour. This system consists of a helmet-mounted display (HMD), a headtracker, and a motion platform with two cameras. Subjects performed several driving tasks on paved and in rough terrain, in four conditions: direct view, periscope view, the head-slaved system with normal camera lenses, and with wide-angle lenses. The results showed that performance with direct view was always best, while no benefits of the wide-angle system were revealed. Driving on paved terrain with the HMD system resulted in better longitudinal and lateral vehicle control than with the periscopes for some tasks, although some negative aspects were also observed. This latter finding can be attributed largely to inexperience with the HMD system. Faster track completion times with the HMD system (normal lenses) than with periscope view were observed for driving off the road. These results show that a head-slaved camera system can be an alternative for the periscope system. However, during the first part of the experiment (paved terrain), three of the seven drivers reported symptoms of motion sickness and subsequently stopped with the experiment.