This study proposes a Lane Change Assistance (LCA) system that provides haptic guidance during lane changes. This system is fully integrated with Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) functionality to provide continuous lateral support during highway driving. Two different system configurations of this LCA are investigated. One is a generalized LCA and the other is an adaptive LCA that provides personalized lane change reference trajectories through trial-by-trial adaptation to lane change duration of previous lane changes. The effects of these systems with respect to mental workload, lateral control performance and user acceptance are investigated. This is done during an experiment with three different driving sessions, consisting of a manual session and two sessions in which either the generalized or adaptive LCA is active. The experiments are conducted on a 6 DoF motion-based simulator with 34 participants, driving in a simulated three-lane highway environment with a scripted traffic scenario. To measure mental workload, an auditory cognitive secondary N-back task is introduced. The results show that the introduction of a generalized or adaptive LCA does not significantly influence the measured mental workload. When the adaptive LCA is introduced, lateral control performance and subjective usefulness is enhanced compared to the generalized LCA and manual driving. ... Read more

Toward automated driving, the human driving behavior has to be studied exactly. Researchers in the section Human-Robot Interaction of the Delft University of Technology are working together with the driving simulator manufacturer Cruden to achieve an understanding of this behavior during lane changes, with the aim of improving the interaction between the driver and the (semi)-automated vehicle. ... Read more

Im Zusammenspiel mit dem automatisierten Fahren muss das menschliche Fahrverhalten genau untersucht werden. Forscher der Technischen Universität Delft arbeiten mit dem Simulatorhersteller Cruden daran, dieses Verhalten bei Spurwechseln besser zu verstehen, mit dem Ziel, die Interaktion zwischen dem Fahrer und dem (teil-)automatisierten Fahrzeug zu verbessern. ... Read more