Effects of Cruising Speed on Steering Oscillations of Car Induced by Modeled Cognitively Impaired Human Driver

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed an approach that uses genetic programming (GP) to automatically develop a driving agent - as a model of a human driver - to optimally steer a realistically simulated car with an instant, non-latent steering response. Using the latter, we tested the hypothesis that introducing a delay in the steering response of an evolved model of a human driver results in well-expressed steering oscillations. We further evaluated the effects of speeding on the steering oscillation and observed that (i) the evolved model of the human driver (driving agent) could robustly control the car driven at various speeds and (ii) the increase in speed results in increase of amplitude of observed steering oscillations. The detection of these oscillations could pave the way for providing early warnings of inadequate driver cognitive load (as an underlying cause of such delays) in normal driving conditions - well before any urgent response to an eventual hazardous traffic situation may be required.

Keywords

• cognitive load
• latent feedback
• driver-induced steering oscillations
• genetic programming
• torcs