University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
Hum Factors. 2019 Mar;61(2):337-347. doi: 10.1177/0018720818805898. Epub 2018 Oct 15.
The effects of inertial (vestibular and somatosensory) information on driver steering during curve navigation were investigated, using an electric four-wheel mobility vehicle outfitted with a steering wheel and a portable virtual reality system.
When driving, multiple sources of perceptual information are available. Researchers have focused on visual information, which plays a critical role in steering control. However, it is not yet well established how inertial information might contribute.
I biased inertial cues by varying visual/inertial gains (doubled, halved, reversed), as drivers negotiated curving paths, and measured steering accuracy and efficiency. I also assessed whether being exposed to inertial biases had an impact on postbias steering by comparing pre- and posttest session performance measures.
Doubling or halving inertial cues had little effect on steering performance. Inertial information only disrupted steering when it was reversed with respect to visual information. Over time, the influence of this extreme inertial bias was reduced though not eliminated. Postbias curve navigation performance was not impacted, likely because participants had learned to disregard, rather than integrate, biased inertial cues.
Results suggest that biased inertial information has little influence on curve navigation performance when visual information is available.
Though inertial cues may be important for open-loop steering, when visual cues are unavailable, their role in closed-loop steering seems less influential. This has implications for driving simulation and suggests that inertial discrepancies due to limitations in motion-cuing capabilities may not be all that problematic for the simulation of closed-loop curve steering tasks.
使用配备方向盘和便携式虚拟现实系统的电动四轮代步车，研究惯性（前庭和躯体感觉）信息对驾驶员在曲线导航过程中的转向的影响。
驾驶时，有多种来源的感知信息可用。研究人员专注于视觉信息，因为它在转向控制中起着关键作用。但是，惯性信息的作用尚不清楚。
我通过改变视觉/惯性增益（加倍、减半、反转）来偏向惯性线索，让驾驶员在曲线路径上行驶，并测量转向精度和效率。我还通过比较前后测试会话的性能指标，评估了暴露于惯性偏差是否会对后偏置转向产生影响。
加倍或减半惯性线索对转向性能几乎没有影响。只有当惯性信息与视觉信息反转时，它才会扰乱转向。随着时间的推移，尽管这种极端惯性偏差的影响有所减弱，但并未消除。后偏置曲线导航性能不受影响，可能是因为参与者已经学会忽略而不是整合有偏差的惯性线索。
结果表明，在视觉信息可用的情况下，偏向的惯性信息对曲线导航性能的影响很小。
尽管在开环转向时惯性线索可能很重要，但当视觉线索不可用时，它们在闭环转向中的作用似乎影响较小。这对驾驶模拟有影响，并表明由于运动提示能力的限制导致的惯性差异对于闭环曲线转向任务的模拟可能不是那么成问题。
