Estimation of arousal-level from steering operations

Analysis was carried out with respect to a large amount of data pertaining to drivers steering operations and vehicle motions on a simulator when a random side-wind input of the same level as that in actual driving conditions was applied to the vehicle. The results of this data indicated that the driver's arousal-level could be evaluated when the coherence between disturbance and steering angle or the standard deviation of the vehicle's lateral displacement was estimated. By means of computer simulation and additional testing, studies were carried out with respect to the precision of the arousal-level evaluation in situations where side-wind input and vehicle's stability factor were varied, (C) 2001 Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan, Inc. and Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.