A KANSEI ENGINEERING APPROACH TO A DRIVER VEHICLE SYSTEM

In every process of car development, Kansei Engineering has turned out to be a good tool for adapting car products to the tastes or lifestyles of customers. Kansei Engineering approaches to car development have already been applied in some areas, for example, tuning the exhaust sound of a sports car. A Kansei Engineering approach to a driver/vehicle system is a difficult research area because it involves handling a full-range of human feelings or emotions and evaluating many car product parameters. To assist such an approach, an advanced driving simulator which has a large amplitude motion system has been developed at Mazda Technical Research Center (Yokohama). In this initial stage, a study on the human perception mechanism for vehicle yaw motion has been conducted as a basic study of human senses. This paper describes the concepts of the Kansei Engineering approach to a driver/vehicle system using a driving simulator, and the results of an application study on human perception.