Driver perception of steady-state steering feel

Abstract

Three psychophysical experiments were conducted to investigate the perception of steering wheel force and steering wheel angle.  The first of these investigated participants’ ability to match a reference on a wheel that did not move, and a reference on a wheel that was free to rotate.  The results show that steering wheel force was more intuitive than steering wheel torque, and steering wheel angle was more intuitive than steering wheel displacement.  The second experiment investigated difference thresholds (the smallest detectable change in a stimulus magnitude) for both steering wheel force and steering wheel angle.  The results show that a 15% change in the steering wheel force was required in order to perceive a difference over the range 5.25 N to 21 N.  A 14% difference was required in steering wheel angle over the range 4° to 18°.  The third experiment examined perceptual scaling of steering wheel force and steering wheel angle, and found that neither property was perceived linearly (e.g. a doubling of force or angle was not perceived as a doubling of force or angle). The perception of steering wheel force grew at a faster rate than the actual force, and the perception of steering wheel angle grew at a slower rate than the actual angle.

Part 3 of the thesis investigates the perception of steering wheel stiffness with four studies.  The first of these investigated the difference threshold (or smallest detectible change) of steering wheel stiffness, and found that a 20% change in the mechanical work done (force integrated over displacement) was required to perceive a difference between stimuli.  The second study found that the scaling functions for steering wheel force and steering wheel angle determined in Part 2 could be combined to predict a stiffness profile that would feel linear (so that the forces and angles at the steering wheel would grow in magnitude in a linear way).  The third study investigated preferred steering feel, and found that linear and preferred steering wheel stiffness are different. The last study in Part 3 investigated the use of a power law function to describe real vehicle data for steady-state steering feel from a Jaguar XK, Jaguar S-Type, Land Rover Freelander, Ford S-Max, Ford Focus, Ford Fiesta, and BMW 520i, and found that a power law approximates the data.

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