What determines drivers’ speed?: A replication of three behavioural adaptation experiments in a single driving simulator study

We conceptually replicated three highly cited experiments on speed adaptation, by measuring drivers’ experienced risk (galvanic skin response; GSR), experienced task difficulty (self-reported task effort; SRTE), and safety margins (time-to-line-crossing; TLC) in a single experiment. The three measures were compared using a nonparametric index...

Effects of platooning on signal-detection performance, workload, and stress: A driving simulator study

Platooning, whereby automated vehicles travel closely together in a group, is attractive in terms of safety and efficiency. However, concerns exist about the psychological state of the platooning driver, who is exempted from direct control, yet remains responsible for monitoring the outside environment to detect potential threats. By means of a...

The effects of time pressure on driver performance and physiological activity: A driving simulator study

Speeding because of time pressure is a leading contributor to traffic accidents. Previous research indicates that people respond to time pressure through increased physiological activity and by adapting their task strategy in order to mitigate task demands. In the present driving simulator study, we investigated effects of time pressure on...

Effects of adaptive cruise control and highly automated driving on workload and situation awareness: A review of the empirical evidence

Adaptive cruise control (ACC), a driver assistance system that controls longitudinal motion, has been introduced in consumer cars in 1995. A next milestone is highly automated driving (HAD), a system that automates both longitudinal and lateral motion. We investigated the effects of ACC and HAD on drivers’ workload and situation awareness...

Control loops with human operators in space operations: part I: human engineering analysis, synthesis and evaluation techniques

This report is a tutorial overview for the European Space Agency (ESA) of human engineering approaches and methodologies which are applicable for analysis of performance of human-machine systems, with specific emphasis on space teleoperator applications. Motivated by the presumed active role of the human operator in future space teleoperation...

The effect of visual information on the manual approach and landing

The visual scene is an important source of information for the manual approach and landing task. This study deals with the effect of this information in combination with basic display information on the manual approach performance. In this context, a pre-experimental theoretical analysis has been performed in terms of the optimal control model....

Thresholds for the visual perception of position deviations and motion

During a visual approach to landing a pilot uses cues in the visual scene for the control of aircraft attitude and flight path. The accuracy with which some relevant display elements can "be set at a desired, nominal, position was determined in an experiment via the phychophysical "method of adjustment". Furthermore relevant literature with...

Performance and workload analysis of in-flight helicopter missions

The study described in this report was aimed at assessing the potentials of the optimal control model structure to predict the important characteristics of realistic operational helicopter missions. The theoretical and experimental results indicate that the optimal control model succesfully predicts the best attainable (rather than the average)...