Abstract
Previous behavioural research (Land and Horwood in Nature 377:339–340, 1995) indicates that surprisingly little visual information is required to effect smooth and accurate steering through a curving roadway. Based on results from a driving simulator study, Land and Horwood reported that viewing the roadway through two horizontal apertures, one degree of visual angle in height, can result in steering performance which is indistinguishable from that obtained with the whole scene visible. The position of the apertures in the visual field, they claimed, is crucial; higher up leads to less accurate but more stable steering responses, whilst lower down leads to jerky steering but more accurate lane-keeping. These findings are consistent with a two-stage model of steering control proposed by Donges in Human Factors 20:691–707 (1978). However, in a driving simulator, the temporal lag between the input signal received from a control device and the output presented on the display can have profound effects on steering behaviour. In two experiments, we show that the effect of aperture position on steering accuracy and stability is pronounced when a slow frame update rate is used (7.2 Hz, as used by Land and Horwood in Nature 377:339–340, 1995), but largely attenuated with a faster update rate (72 Hz). These results are consistent with the broader empirical literature dealing with temporal delays in manual tracking, and urge a critical reappraisal of the behavioural evidence for the two-stage steering model.
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Acknowledgment
This research was supported by Human Frontier Science Program (Grant RGP 03/2006).
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Appendices
Appendix 1
Analogue measurement of graphics system delay: End-To-End Latency
One of the crucial aspects of this study is the length and variability of delays experienced by our drivers between turning the steering wheel and seeing a change in the virtual environment. In order to measure this delay accurately we made use of a 100 MHz Techtronix storage scope (TDS3014) which recorded the analogue voltage input to the red channel of the projector. The simulator was initially set up to produce a blank screen. A second channel fed to the oscilloscope directly from a console button on the steering wheel. This button press was used to trigger recording of the red channel voltage of the projector. At the same time, the simulator was programmed to immediately generate a test image comprising a half red, half black field as soon as it detected the button press—see Fig. 6. The elapsed time between the button press and the first frame of the test image (the end-to-end latency (Morice et al. 2008) was taken as a measure of system delay. Twenty such measurements were taken at the two update rates under investigation. As expected, the latency was significantly affected by update rate. At 72 Hz the mean delay was 68.50 ms (SD = 7.07 ms), significantly lower than that at 7.2 Hz (M = 121.72 ms, SD = 25.68 ms), t(19) = 9.62, P = 1E-8. In addition to a higher mean end-to-end latency, the variability was over three times higher at the lower update rate.
Appendix 2
Results of three-way repeated-measures ANOVA conducted on four instability variables in Experiment 2. See Table 5 and Fig. 7.
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Cloete, S., Wallis, G. Visuomotor control of steering: the artefact of the matter. Exp Brain Res 208, 475–489 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2530-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2530-x