Effect of risk-predictive haptic guidance in one-pedal driving mode

Abstract

The research presented in this article focuses on the design of a driver support system for risk-predictive driving under a potentially hazardous situation for a pedestrian who crosses a road from the driver’s blind spots. Our aim is to develop a system that would cooperate with the driver in leading the normative speed calculated by the co-driver function. The design philosophy of haptic guidance is to communicate to the drivers the potentially hazardous situation through tactile cues from the active gas pedal and to assist drivers to in preparing for possible road surprises. We intended to combine the algorithm of the haptic feedback loop with the functionality of the one-pedal driving mode interface. Three design issues for the haptic guidance system can be distinguished: the design of a one-pedal driving mode based on a one-pedal operation; the modeling of risk-predictive driving behavior; and the haptic feedback algorithm with active gas pedal. We tested our system in human-in-the-loop experiments in a driving simulator to investigate (1) the effect of the one-pedal driving mode interface on the driver behavior and (2) the effect of haptic guidance support on the driver behavior. From the results of our experiments, we confirmed that haptic guidance can improve the risk-predictive driving performance for a slowdown task via the one-pedal driving mode.