Driver-Vehicle Interaction with Respect to Steering Controllability

The vehicle characteristics of two vehicles have been changed by various means. Steering control quality has then been investigated with the help of lane change manoeuvres.

The investigation comprises both theoretical analyses and experimental tests. The tests comprise measuring of vehicle characteristics, subjective rating of steering control quality and measuring of performance of the system driver - vehicle, regarding the ability to follow a predicted course.

Results have shown that there is a strong relationship between yaw velocity response time, steering wheel angle gradient, steering wheel torque gradient and subjective rating.

The results also show that yaw velocity response time is the dominating factor and greatly influences steering control quality in transient steering manoeuvres, with relatively high lateral acceleration.