Haptic shared control for backward parking and its effect on skill increase in novice drivers

The present research aims to develop advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs) that achieve increase of driver's skill as well as increase of driver performance during using the ADAS. A haptic shared control (HSC) is a promising tool for such ADASs with skill learning function because it enables the human operator to interact and communicate continuously with the assist system through a haptic interface. We focused on the assist system by haptic shared control (HSC) for backward parking maneuvers, which are considered to be a demanding task for novice drivers. Some studies showed that backward parking assist by HSC achieves performance increase during assist control as well as increase of parking skill. However, no research shows the effect of the driver's skill and the method to use the HSC though it is thought to affect the effectiveness of the ADAS. The purpose of the present study was to investigate effect of the gain setting of our proposed parking assist system with HSC on the novice drivers' performance increase during use of the system as well as their skill increases where the drivers were instructed to drive in accordance with the haptic guidance. Driving simulator experiments of different feedback gains demonstrated that skill im-provements were achieved when a higher gain is employed.