Experimental Facility for Examining Lateral Motion of Motor Vehicles and Research in Control Strategies Using the Facility 785106

This report describes an experimental facility that allows a motor vehicle large lateral motion by the use of wide drums for the study of the man-vehicle system. The equipment has been used to study the control performance of many drivers, from unskillful to expert, against a motor vehicle's lateral motion, and results of the study are also reported. Experiments simulating lateral gust disturbance during high-speed driving have suggested that expert drivers differ very much from unskillful drivers in the following points: Expert drivers use a strategy to obtain proper information on external disturbance for programmed control of the vehicle by allowing the vehicle lateral displacement within the lane width just after the external disturbance has been applied to it, and they are capable of selecting the information, most suitable for control according to the situation, out of the many cues on the motion of the vehicle