Enhancement of spatial awareness on vehicle driving using transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation

The spatial awareness on vehicle driving is related to the body schema (BS) that is a postural model of the body by integrating visual information and somatosensory information. Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) can affect human somatosensory and induce the BS modification; hence, the authors developed a system to assist the acquisition of spatial awareness on vehicle driving using TENS. In order to evaluate the TENS assistance system, an experiment to record the minimum distance between the wall and the vehicle was performed while participants drove on the virtual course using a dSPACE-based driving simulator. As a result, in the case of the TENS assistant, 2 of 4 participants drove the vehicle away from the wall while driving the course. Also, there were no participants who increased approach to the road wall by TENS. Therefore, the experimental result illustrated that TENS had a possibility to assist the acquisition of spatial awareness on vehicle driving.