A Two-Dimensional Weighting Function for a Driver Assistance System

Driver assistance systems that supply force feedback (FF) on the accelerator commonly use relative distance and velocity with respect to the closest lead vehicle in front of the own vehicle. This 1-D feedback might not accurately represent the situation and can cause unwanted step-shaped changes in the FFs during lateral maneuvers. To address these shortcomings, a 2-D system is proposed that calculates FF using a weighted average of the influences of lead vehicles. Offline simulations and an experiment in a driving simulator were performed to compare no feedback, 1-D systems, and the novel 2-D system during a car-following task with cut-in maneuvers. Results show that the 2-D feedback resulted in lower mean forces, lower response times to cut-in vehicles, and favorable subjective experiences as compared to the 1-D systems.