Driver’s Gaze-point Analysis of Virtual Platoon Driving for Welfare Vehicle using Direct Eye Measurement Device with HMD

Recently, welfare vehicles are widely used among the elderly. However, it is difficult for inexperienced beginners to control the welfare vehicle in narrow places such as elevators and narrow corridors. For that difficulty, the driving assistance system for the welfare vehicle has been proposed, which is maneuverable by the virtual platoon control technique using Augmented or Mixed Reality. However, we cannot confirm that the driver is focusing on the digital content displayed on the head mounted display (HMD). The HMD that can detect eye movement is required. In this paper, HMD with a measurement device to detect the eye movement is prototyped using the corneal reflection. Wearing HMD with a measurement device, the driver is assisted using novel virtual platoon control by Augmented Reality. The driver's gaze-point where the driver focus is analyzed online. As the result, the popular hypothesis for the facilitate driving with the assistance system of the welfare vehicle is obtained from experiments.