Increasing Truck Driver's Awareness: Use of In-Vehicle 3D Sounds.

摘要

This report describes the results and conclusions of Increasing Truck Driver's Awareness: Use of In-Vehicle 3D Sounds, a Safety IDEA project aimed at developing and testing a system using in-vehicle three-dimensional (3D) sound as a technique for augmenting the truck drivers situational awareness (SA). Sound insulation of the truck cab, designed to reduce noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH), coupled with the inherent limited visibility from inside the truck cab, can contribute to the reduction in the drivers SA around the truck. The objective of this project was to test whether 3D sounds could be used effectively to increase the drivers SA by providing traffic cues, i.e., different simulated traffic situations represented by auditory icons. Auditory icons are sound representations of real world, naturally occurring events. Icons representative of four road users (cars, bicyclist, pedestrians, and motorcycles) that a truck driver would typically encounter in traffic situations, were created and used to determine if a 3D sound system can increase the drivers awareness of the traffic situation by hearing the road users location, and directional movement relative to the drivers position in the vehicle. The investigation to implement, optimize, and test an in-vehicle 3D sound system was organized into two stages. Stage I consisted of creating and testing natural sounding 3D auditory icons. Test clinics were conducted in order to determine if participants could: Recognize the 3D auditory icon (cue recognition) by matching the 3D sound to the representative road user (cars, bicyclist, pedestrian, and motorcycle). Determine the road users location (cue detection) by matching the 3D sound to the sound source location. Determine the road users direction of movement (cue projection) by indicating the spatial movement of the 3D sound.