Driver Behaviour Characterization Using an Instrumented Steering Wheel Conscious/Unconscious Muscle Activation

The paper presents an Instrumented Steering Wheel (ISW) that measures the forces and moments that the driver applies by each hand. The ISW is equipped with two six-axis load cells and has the same inertia of a reference steering wheel fitted on normal production cars. The ISW is used to assess the conscious or uncon-scious application of forces at the steering wheel during a set of manoeuvres. The conscious steering actions refer both to sinusoidal steering and to running into a steering pad. A statistical analysis is performed to characterize conscious driver be-haviour. Referring to unconscious activation of muscles, a kick-plate pass-by ma-noeuvre is studied. A number of drivers are employed for such tests.Typical behav-ioural patterns are found, describing how drivers apply forces and moments in con-scious steering actions. The unconscious moment applied during a kick-plate ma-noeuvre may be even 20% of the maximum torque applied during counter-steering. The results can be used to develop new driver models, additionally, the ISW is pro-posed as a tool for properly defining the ADAS intervention logic to reduce the in-trusiveness feeling felt by the driver and increase safety in case of unconscious steering actions.