The Value of Haptic Feedback in Lane Keeping

We predominantly rely on our (intermittent) visual perception of the environment to perform a driving task safely, robustly, and with sufficient experience seemingly effortless and comfortably. Research has shown that haptic shared control can improve car-following performance, curve negotiation, evasive manoeuvring, eco-driving and even adhering to speed limits, while reducing driver effort to do so. While these results show the versatility of the application of haptic guidance the improvements in performance were usually significant but relatively small compared to the visual only conditions. The goal of the research presented in this article was to gather empirical data to determine the information content contained in haptic feedback to present essential steering control information to drivers during curve negotiation. We hypothesized that the absence of essential visual information from the environment critical to lateral control of the vehicle - either near or far visual information - could adequately be compensated for by haptic guidance on the steering wheel. The results of our fixed-base driving simulator experiment show that our haptic guidance system is most effective in compensating for loss of near visual information, which guides the compensatory control process.