Driver assist system for human–machine interaction

A haptic driver–vehicle steering interface is introduced that interacts with the driver through environmentally mediated torque and stiffness changes, thereby communicating the vehicle’s proximity to constraints in the driving environment. The system design is based on principles of distributed cognition, which are used to shape the force characteristics to provide the driver with a tangible, rich, distributed representation of the task constraints. This mapping of the task constraints aids the human operator in satisfying a variety of needs, including managing risk, maintaining contextual awareness and achieving a satisfactory level of performance. The proposed design philosophy was applied to implement a haptic steering system in a real-world test vehicle to assist drivers in navigating through an experimental course with tight passages. In tests conducted with 12 participants, not only did most drivers show improved performance, but activities identified as epistemic behaviors were also observed; in the context of driving, epistemic behaviors are actions through which a driver probes the environment to maintain contextual awareness for the purpose of actively maintaining a satisfactory balance between performance and risk. These findings indicate that the proposed system design allows humans to actively integrate the haptic interface system into their cognitive loops and that the resulting human–machine system achieves higher performance than the human alone. The observed human–machine system interaction is interpreted as achieving improved resilience against variations in environmentally imposed risks.