Development and Evaluation of a Distance Control Assist System with an Active Accelerator Pedal

A Distance Control Assist System (DCA) aiming at facilitating the driver maintaining a following distance to a lead vehicle in congested traffic was developed. The DCA imposes active force to the driver’s foot to urge him or her to release the accelerator pedal as well as decelerates automatically when the host vehicle comes too close to a lead vehicle. This paper introduces the system description and a field test conducted to evaluate effectiveness of the DCA. As a result of the field test, comparison of the driver performances between with and without the DCA showed that numbers of braking by the drivers were decreased, and comparison of NASA-TLX scores showed subjective workload was reduced by the DCA. These results suggested that the DCA can contribute to mitigation of the driver’s workload while following situations.