A Driver Support Interface to Detect Optical Illusion Places on a Road Map

Optical illusions during driving have a possibility to induce serious traffic accidents or traffic jams. This study intended to create and evaluate an assistance interface to automatically detect road map places where optical illusion scenes appear. The current study focuses on the slope illusion, which is induced by misrecognition of a vertical slope gradient. Such illusion places on a target route may cause traffic jams or automobile crashes. This user interface was composed of simple web-based applications with free geographic data. The road slopes were continuously calculated from accurate elevation data provided by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan. The created user interface was able to automatically search for an optical illusion place as a driving scene on a target route map. In future works, an improved user interface could be expanded to making a hazard map in global roads and a real-time system to alert drivers to potential dangers.