The influence of motion and audio cues on driver performance in an automobile simulator

A highway driving simulator with a computer-generated visual display, physical motion cues of roll, yaw, and lateral translation, and velocity dependent sound/vibration cues was used to investigate the influence of these cues on driver performance.

Forty-eight student subjects were randomly allocated to six experimental groups. Each group of eight subjects experienced a unique combination of the motion and audio cues. The control group performed under a full simulation condition while each of the remaining five groups performed with certain combinations of motion and sound deleted. Each driver generated nine minutes of continuous data from which five performance measures were derived. Results indicate that the performance measures of yaw, lateral and velocity deviation are significantly affected by the deletion of cues. In support of the hypothesis that driver performance is augmented by the addition of motion cues, significant negative correlations were shown between the number of motion cues present and the measures of yaw and lateral deviation. With respect to motion and audio cues, recommendations were made regarding simulator design criteria and relative simulator fidelity comparisons.