Driver-Steering Wheel Interaction during Cornering

This research aims at understanding how the driver interacts with the steering wheel, in order to detect driving strategies. Such driving strategies will allow in the future to derive accurate holistic driver models for enhancing both safety and comfort of vehicles. The use of an original instrumented steering wheel (ISW) allows to measure at each hand, three forces, three moments, and the grip force. Experiments have been performed with 10 nonprofessional drivers in a high-end dynamic driving simulator. Three aspects of driving strategy were analyzed, namely the amplitudes of the forces and moments applied to the steering wheel, the correlations among the different signals of forces and moments, and the order of activation of the forces and moments. The results obtained on a road test have been compared with the ones coming from a driving simulator, with satisfactory results. Two different strategies for actuating the steering wheel have been identified. In the first strategy, the torque is provided mostly by just one single arm and hand. In the second strategy, the torque is created by both of the two arms and hands, which apply forces and moments in opposite directions. Future holistic driver models able to describe the forces acting at whole body may benefit from the outcomes of this research.