Abstract
In dynamic driving simulators, the experience of operating a vehicle is reproduced by combining visual stimuli generated by graphical rendering with inertial stimuli generated by platform motion. Due to inherent limitations of the platform workspace, inertial stimulation is subject to shortcomings in the form of missing cues, false cues, and/or scaling errors, which negatively affect simulation fidelity. In the present study, we aim at quantifying the relative contribution of an active somatosensory stimulation to the perceived intensity of self-motion, relative to other sensory systems. Participants judged the intensity of longitudinal and lateral driving maneuvers in a dynamic driving simulator in passive driving conditions, with and without additional active somatosensory stimulation, as provided by an Active Seat (AS) and Active Belts (AB) integrated system (ASB). The results show that ASB enhances the perceived intensity of sustained decelerations, and increases the precision of acceleration perception overall. Our findings are consistent with models of perception, and indicate that active somatosensory stimulation can indeed be used to improve simulation fidelity.
Highlights
Dynamic driving simulators are nowadays a widely used tool within automotive companies, both in R&D and in production departments
Verbal estimates collected in the Magnitude Estimation (ME) tasks and the fitted psychometric functions are shown in Fig 5(a) and 5(b), for the lateral and longitudinal case, respectively
Significant p-values in man × int, con × int, man × con × int indicate that there are interaction effects: as can be seen in Fig 5(a) and 5(b), the slope of the psychometric function differs between experimental conditions
Summary
Dynamic driving simulators are nowadays a widely used tool within automotive companies, both in R&D and in production departments. Efforts are made to improve upon this washout strategy (see e.g., work on Model Predictive Control [2,3,4,5,6]), the inherent limitations of a motion simulator’s envelope cannot entirely prevent missing cues, false cues, and/or scaling errors. These limitations may in turn negatively affect the perceived realism and immersion in the simulation, and may even trigger motion sickness [1, 7,8,9]
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