Study on handling design parameters based on real-vehicle experiments considering vehicle data, driver physiological data, and subjective assessment

Vehicle handling characteristics change based on a variety of car design factors. Usually, the human driver is not considered in the vehicle handling design processes and rather, only vehicle design factors are considered in the design of handling characteristics. On the other hand, a professional driver performs a subjective evaluation of the car in a handling performance evaluation. Therefore, discrepancies are often found between the results of the handling characteristics designed based on the analysis and results felt subjectively by a human driver during actual driving. Therefore, it would be useful to develop a vehicle handling characteristics design method that considers both the vehicle and the human driver. This paper describes a real-car-based experimental platform that records the driver's biological signs and vehicle movement signs and evaluates the handling performance. For a quantitative evaluation, the driver's electrocardiogram, body pressure, brain wave, and movement signs and the vehicle movement signs were measured. For a qualitative evaluation, drivers wrote down their subjective feeling about car handling on the evaluation form. Data were obtained from two professional drivers participating in double lane change, step steer, and weave test. Based on the data, correlation analysis was conducted between the quantitative and qualitative indices. The drivers' physiological signals were ranked by comparing with the vehicle signs based on the index sensitivity obtained in this study. © ICROS 2019.