Haptic Gas Pedal Feedback for Active Car-Following Support

Dit proefschrift is goedgekeurd door de promotoren: " To me it is of very little importance whether they [Masters] exist or whether they do not exist, because when you have to walk to the camp or to the station from here, there are people ahead of you, nearer the station, people who have started earlier. What is more important – to get to the station or to sit down and worship the man who is ahead of you? " Henry Miller (quoting Krishnamurti) vii Summary With the increased importance of the car as a personal means of transportation, non-driving related devices, such as car-stereos, mobile phones, and more recently navigation systems, divert drivers' attention more and more away from the primary sources of information necessary for safe operation of the vehicle: the road and other road users. With traffic accident statistics attributing driver inattention as one of the major causes of traffic accidents (Campbell,, this increase of in-vehicle devices is worrisome at least – if not dangerous. To bridge the gap between the gain in improved passive safety (for example airbags and anti-crash bodies) and the increasing development of non-driving related in-vehicle devices, car safety systems research is directed more towards systems that actively support drivers in their driving task. Ultimately active support systems aim to prevent drivers from getting into accidents. This is a radically different approach compared to that of passive safety systems, which help to lessen the impact of driving accidents but do nothing to contribute to preventing drivers from getting into an accident. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) currently available can be labelled as what Goodrich and Boer (2000) call the primary purpose of task automation: " safely promoting comfort ". By automating routine skills that were previously required of drivers, for example, speed regulation and car-following which are taken care of by Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) upon initiation by the driver, driving is made easier without compromising safety. Task automation systems perform driver tasks to maintain the safe field of travel automatically, under a very limited set of circumstances. More recent ITS's are focusing more on what Goodrich and Boer (2000) call response automation: " comfortably promoting safety ". This type of automation automatically informs drivers when their safe field of travel is degrading seriously, urging them to take swift action to restore this situation to an acceptable level of safety. So, rather than taking over …