Investigation of Adaptive Front-lighting System in human machine interface as driver assistance

摘要

An Adaptive Front-lighting System (Adaptive Front-lighting System: AFS) that changes the light distribution of the vehicle headlights depending on speed and road configuration with the objective of enhancing the safety of driving at night is being put into practical use. The effect of improved visibility at night by the adoption of the AFS is promising. However, in order to confirm whether or not the AFS is really beneficial for drivers there needs to be evaluations which reflect human characteristics, the so-called concept of human dynamics, when driving a vehicle. That is, it is necessary to perform an evaluation of performance by considering the vehicle as a man-machine that is integrated with human characteristics. Therefore, the effect of the AFS was confirmed in the present research by performing experiments in which a fixed driving simulator (hereafter, abbreviated as DS) is used and actual vehicle experiments with the objective of quantifying influences on the driver's perception, judgment, and operation characteristics by controlling light distribution at curves. The evaluation method consists of an ordinary user driving actual mountain roads and the DS in which they are simulated. For driving conditions, experiments were performed with and without headlamp control while traveling at night. For measurement items, driving performance behavior such as steering wheel angles and changes of visual information using an eye-point camera were measured as driver information. In addition, the measurement of yaw rates and vehicle motion trajectories were performed as vehicle data. From the above results, the effectiveness of lighting control pertaining to long-distance visibility by the eye-point camera and driving performance behavior was confirmed. We were able to confirm from the comparison results of actual driving with the developed DS that the performance evaluation of the man-machine system using DS is effective for future product development.