Skill Retention for Driving Simulation Experiments

Whether driving a car in the real world or a simulator vehicle in a computer generated world, the procedural aspects of driving are very similar. The steering wheel is used to control the direction of the vehicle while the accelerator and brake pedals are used to control the speed. This similarity means that people who already possess the skill of driving in the real world are expected to transfer those existing skills to drive a simulator vehicle. Recognizing the need for skill transference, the typical protocol for conducting driving simulation experiments includes a practice drive, which affords participants the opportunity to learn to drive the simulator vehicle. Previous research has shown that some participants quickly learn to interact and exhibit consistently good performance while other participants first exhibit poor performance and require time driving, or repeated trials of a particular task, to improve their performance. One of the risks of driving a simulated vehicle is experiencing symptoms of simulator sickness. The occurrence and severity of these symptoms are believed to increase with continued exposure. Therefore, it would be valuable if the practice drive could be completed on a different day than that of the experimental drive(s). Such an approach would allow sufficient practice without requiring participants to remain in the simulator for a prolonged period of time. The possibility of having the practice occur on a separate day from the experiment was explored in this research. A repeated measures experiment was designed to test whether the driving performance during two separate drives would differ more when the drives were separated by a longer interval of time. The simulator scenario was the same for both drives. The scenario required participants to drive a one-way, three lane freeway segment and make 75 lane changes. Half the participants drove on two consecutive days, and half the participants drove on two days, one week apart. Forty-two participants were recruited from th

PLANNING AND COORDINATION IN DRIVING SIMULATION

We present an overview of coordination and planning tasks that we face with during the development of the AgentDrive simulation platform. We particularly describe an integration of the AgentDrive with a driving simulator OpenDS. We demonstrate how the planning and coordination mechanisms can be applied in a driving simulator for automated driving applications or realistic traffic generation. We emphasize particular planning and/or coordination methods that were already developed using AgentDrive platform

The influence of auditory feedback on speed choice, violations and comfort in a driving simulation game

Two experiments are reported which explore the relationships between auditory feedback (engine noise), speed choice, driving violations and driver comfort. Participants played a driving simulation game with different levels of auditory feedback in the form of engine noise. In Experiment 1, a between-subjects design revealed that no noise and low levels of engine noise (65 dB(A)) resulted in participants driving at faster speeds than in the medium (75 dB(A)) and high (85 dB(A)) levels of engine noise conditions. The low noise feedback conditions were also associated with decreases in driver comfort. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that low levels of engine noise feedback (no feedback and 70 dB(A)) were associated with increases in driving speed, and driving violations relative to higher levels of feedback (75 dB(A) and 80 dB(A)). Implications exist for current car manufacturing trends which emphasise a growing increase in noise insulation for the driver. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Software assembly and open standards for driving simulation

International audienceDriving simulation systems involve a combination of different computation codes. Although some of these modules are application-specific, their majority is reusable and state-of-the-art implementations are readily available in the open source community. This study investigates whether these open source libraries can combine to build a driving simulation application with reasonable performance. To this end, a component-oriented architecture is proposed, in which modules encapsulate relevant libraries behind a standard interface and exchange simulation data through a message passing interface. By integrating a render engine, a physics library and a simple vehicle dynamics model, we were able to rapidly build a functional minimal simulation application supporting distributed execution over a cluster of computers. As this architecture allows the transparent modification of module code and simplifies the addition of new modules, this kernel represents the foundations of an extensible and reconfigurable open source system dedicated to driving simulation. Details on this kernel application and ongoing development of this platform can found at http://open-s.sourceforge.net.Les logiciels de simulation de conduite reposent sur une combinaison de différents codes de calculs. Bien qu’une partie de ces modules soit extrêmement dépendante d’un usage particulier, leur majorité est réutilisable et certaines implémentations de pointe sont disponibles dans la communauté du logiciel libre. Cette étude vise à déterminer s’il est possible de combiner ces bibliothèques libres afin de construire une application de simulation de conduite atteignant de raisonnables performances. A cette fin, nous proposons une architecture orientée composant, selon laquelle ces bibliothèques sont encapsulées dans des modules s’échangeant des données relatives à la simulation au travers d’une interface d’échange de messages. En intégrant à cette architecture un moteur graphique, une bibliothèque de simulation de physique et un simple modèle de dynamique de véhicule, nous avons pu rapidement mettre en place une application de simulation minimale, pouvant s’exécuter de manière distribuée sur un cluster d’ordinateurs. Cette architecture permettant de modifier le code d’un module de manière transparente et simplifiant l’ajout de nouveaux modules, ce noyau constitue la base d’un logiciel libre extensible et polymorphique dédié à la simulation de conduite dont les détails peuvent être consultés sur le site : http://open-s.sourceforge.net

Software assembly and open standards for driving simulation

Driving simulation systems involve a combination of different computation codes. Although some of these modules are application-specific, their majority is reusable and state-of-the-art implementations are readily available in the open source community. This study investigates whether these open source libraries can combine to build a driving simulation application with reasonable performance. To this end, a component-oriented architecture is proposed, in which modules encapsulate relevant libraries behind a standard interface and exchange simulation data through a message passing interface. By integrating a render engine, a physics library and a simple vehicle dynamics model, we were able to rapidly build a functional minimal simulation application supporting distributed execution over a cluster of computers. As this architecture allows the transparent modification of module code and simplifies the addition of new modules, this kernel represents the foundations of an extensible and reconfigurable open source system dedicated to driving simulation. Details on this kernel application and ongoing development of this platform can found at http://open-s.sourceforge.net.Les logiciels de simulation de conduite reposent sur une combinaison de différents codes de calculs. Bien qu’une partie de ces modules soit extrêmement dépendante d’un usage particulier, leur majorité est réutilisable et certaines implémentations de pointe sont disponibles dans la communauté du logiciel libre. Cette étude vise à déterminer s’il est possible de combiner ces bibliothèques libres afin de construire une application de simulation de conduite atteignant de raisonnables performances. A cette fin, nous proposons une architecture orientée composant, selon laquelle ces bibliothèques sont encapsulées dans des modules s’échangeant des données relatives à la simulation au travers d’une interface d’échange de messages. En intégrant à cette architecture un moteur graphique, une bibliothèque de simulation de physique et un simple modèle de dynamique de véhicule, nous avons pu rapidement mettre en place une application de simulation minimale, pouvant s’exécuter de manière distribuée sur un cluster d’ordinateurs. Cette architecture permettant de modifier le code d’un module de manière transparente et simplifiant l’ajout de nouveaux modules, ce noyau constitue la base d’un logiciel libre extensible et polymorphique dédié à la simulation de conduite dont les détails peuvent être consultés sur le site : http://open-s.sourceforge.net