Human-Centered Design of an Acc-With-Braking and Forward-Crash-Warning System

This paper addresses the development of driver assistance systems whose functional purposes are to provide both adaptive cruise control (ACC) and forward collision warning (FCW). The purpose of the paper is to combine concepts from human factors psychology, vehicle-dynamics, and control theory, thereby contributing to the body of knowledge and understanding concerning human-centered approaches for designing and evaluating driver assistance systems. Conceptual and experimental results pertaining to driving manually and with the assistance of ACC and FCW are presented. The following human-centered aspects of driver-assistance systems are analyzed and presented: the looming effect; including rule-based and skill-based behavior in the design of ACC systems; using desired dynamics in controlling the driving process; braking rules that trade headway range for deceleration level; and collision-warning rules based on two different stress indicators. Field-test data are examined to justify and verify the parametric values selected for use in human-centered ACC systems. Measured data from on-road driving are used to evaluate the performance of proposed FCW systems in braking situations. The paper concludes with observations concerning the difficulty of developing a clear understanding of when and why drivers brake.