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This paper describes a study to determine how steering wheel effort preference changes with vehicle speed for average drivers. These results confirm previously published data indicating drivers prefer increased steering efforts at higher vehicle speeds and extends previous work by providing a more reliable preference function. For comparison, we include similar preference data from two separate field studies as well as pilot results obtained using the General Motors Corporation (GM) driving simulator. The preference study was performed using the Swedish Road and Traffic Research Institute (VTI) driving simulator. The VTI simulator allowed the inclusion of a motion/no-motion test condition to provide some insight regarding the use of low to medium range driving simulators for similar follow-up work. The study demonstrates the feasibility of using driving simulators to obtain customer-based vehicle design requirements for steering feel preferences.

A driving simulator development project at the Systems Engineering and Technical Process Center (SE/TP) is exploring the role of driving simulation in the vehicle design process. The simulator provides two vehicle mockup testing arenas that support a wide field of view, computer-generated image of the road scene which dynamically responds to driver commands as a function of programmable vehicle model parameters. Two unique aspects of the simulator are the fast 65 ms response time and low incidence rate of simulator induced syndrome (about 5%). Preliminary model validation results and data comparing driver performance in a vehicle vs. the simulator indicate accurate handling response dynamics within the on-center handling region (<0.3g lateral acceleration). Applications have included supporting the development of new steering system concepts, as well as evaluating the usability of vehicle controls and displays.