Reducing whole-body vibration exposure of occupants in autonomous car by intelligent behavior

Unlike other autonomous working vehicles such as farm and construction machinery, autonomous cars have at least one occupant inside, even if driving operations are automated. Thus, the whole-body vibration problem must continue to be a research topic for autonomous vehicles. We believe that an autonomous vehicle can mitigate whole body vibration by utilizing autonomous functions such as lane change control. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to verify the effectiveness of lane change control in reducing the whole-body vibration exposure of occupants in autonomous cars. We performed numerical simulations with experimental data obtained using the measurement techniques of ISO2631-1. Thus, we observed that if an autonomous car could skirt rough road surfaces using a lane change function, the degree of ride comfort would be enhanced during travel and the maximum acceptable exposure time as health effect evaluation would be lengthened.