Validation study of a fixed-base driving simulator on steering behavior of drivers

Driving simulator is a good research tool for many scientific researches, but testing the validity is one of the first things to perform before carrying out any research activity on the simulator itself. The validation includes many aspects. This thesis aims to validate the steering behavior of drivers based on a fixed-base driving simulator. The experiments was carried out involving 34 participants in total. They were divided into two groups according to age distribution of field group and drivers of Italy who have driving licenses. The trajectories data from field observations and laboratory experiments included speed, position, curvature, heading angle and other related parameters. The initial experimental data were recorded and calibrated by algorithm of simulator and its correction need to be checked. So according to the mathematical relations between position and other indexes, we have also validated the correction of original data. ??There are three indexes proposed including anticipation distance which is the distance between steering point and starting point of curvature, curvature change rate and steering position where drivers started to turn for passing the curvature part. The comparisons results demonstrate that simulator shows relative validity for the anticipation distance for now. More research data is necessary for it to fix the deviations. In the meantime, simulator also shows absolute validity for curvature change rate and steering positions between real and simulated scenario. These results will provide a big support for the research work of DIATI (Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering) and any other teams working on simulator for road geometrics characterization and to improve existing numerical models.