Study on the effects of changes in VR environment and viewpoint on the physical behavior of vehicle occupants

Abstract

Development of automated driving technology has been progressing recently. Accordingly, the safety of vehicle occupants and the comfort of the vehicle during driving become more important. To improve comfort, it is necessary to investigate the physical behavior of vehicle occupants. In our research, we constructed experimental conditions using VR technology that can artificially reproduce the interior of a vehicle by blocking visual information from the outside world and displaying the created images on a head-mounted display. In addition, we also gave a change in the line of sight, and conducted an experiment when the vehicle was braking. Then, by comparing characteristics in the physical behavior data obtained from the experiment, we investigated the effects of visual information based on the conditions with and without VR and with and without a fixed viewpoint. From the results, we found that visual information has a great influence on physical behavior.