A haptic communication method for a preceding vehicle following system

Abstract

A new preceding vehicle (PV) following system with a haptic communication method, Haptic Adaptive Cruise Control (HACC), is proposed. HACC addresses the intention mismatch between a driver and a conventional adaptive cruise control system in a complex environment. HACC uses the torque around the steering wheel as the interface. The driver can easily find the current PV displaying the direction of the PV with the system's torque around the steering wheel. In addition, the driver can change the PV to another one by adding torque to resist the presented torque of the system. Driving simulator experiments showed that the HACC method reduced the collision risk when the system erroneously changed the PV suddenly, and the haptic information effectively increased the driver's understanding of the system's intention. Furthermore, the driver's intention could be easily communicated to the system.