Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts?
Traffic interactions between merging and highway vehicles are a major topic of research, yielding many empirical studies and models of driver behaviour. Most of these studies on merging use naturalistic data. Although this provides insight into human gap acceptance and traffic flow effects, it obscu...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IEEE
2024-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10380755/ |
| _version_ | 1797346272652296192 |
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| author | Olger Siebinga Arkady Zgonnikov David A. Abbink |
| author_facet | Olger Siebinga Arkady Zgonnikov David A. Abbink |
| author_sort | Olger Siebinga |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Traffic interactions between merging and highway vehicles are a major topic of research, yielding many empirical studies and models of driver behaviour. Most of these studies on merging use naturalistic data. Although this provides insight into human gap acceptance and traffic flow effects, it obscures the operational inputs of interacting drivers. Besides that, researchers have no control over the vehicle kinematics (i.e., positions and velocities) at the start of the interactions. Therefore the relationship between initial kinematics and the outcome of the interaction is difficult to investigate. To address these gaps, we conducted an experiment in a coupled driving simulator with a simplified, top-down view, merging scenario with two vehicles. We found that kinematics can explain the outcome (i.e., which driver merges first) and the duration of the merging conflict. Furthermore, our results show that drivers use key decision moments combined with constant acceleration inputs (intermittent piecewise-constant control) during merging. This indicates that they do not continuously optimise their expected utility. Therefore, these results advocate the development of interaction models based on intermittent piecewise-constant control. We hope our work can contribute to this development and to the fundamental knowledge of interactive driver behaviour. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T11:29:40Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-07d19f7fee3341a7b0747b1d12ce120e |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2687-7813 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T11:29:40Z |
| publishDate | 2024-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems |
| spelling | doaj.art-07d19f7fee3341a7b0747b1d12ce120e2024-01-26T00:02:34ZengIEEEIEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems2687-78132024-01-01510311410.1109/OJITS.2024.334963510380755Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts?Olger Siebinga0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5614-1262Arkady Zgonnikov1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6593-6948David A. Abbink2https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7778-0090Department of Cognitive Robotics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Human-Robot Interaction Group, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The NetherlandsDepartment of Cognitive Robotics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Human-Robot Interaction Group, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The NetherlandsDepartment of Cognitive Robotics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Human-Robot Interaction Group, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The NetherlandsTraffic interactions between merging and highway vehicles are a major topic of research, yielding many empirical studies and models of driver behaviour. Most of these studies on merging use naturalistic data. Although this provides insight into human gap acceptance and traffic flow effects, it obscures the operational inputs of interacting drivers. Besides that, researchers have no control over the vehicle kinematics (i.e., positions and velocities) at the start of the interactions. Therefore the relationship between initial kinematics and the outcome of the interaction is difficult to investigate. To address these gaps, we conducted an experiment in a coupled driving simulator with a simplified, top-down view, merging scenario with two vehicles. We found that kinematics can explain the outcome (i.e., which driver merges first) and the duration of the merging conflict. Furthermore, our results show that drivers use key decision moments combined with constant acceleration inputs (intermittent piecewise-constant control) during merging. This indicates that they do not continuously optimise their expected utility. Therefore, these results advocate the development of interaction models based on intermittent piecewise-constant control. We hope our work can contribute to this development and to the fundamental knowledge of interactive driver behaviour.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10380755/Road transportationhuman in the loophuman Factorsvehicle driving |
| spellingShingle | Olger Siebinga Arkady Zgonnikov David A. Abbink Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts? IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems Road transportation human in the loop human Factors vehicle driving |
| title | Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts? |
| title_full | Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts? |
| title_fullStr | Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts? |
| title_short | Human Merging Behavior in a Coupled Driving Simulator: How Do We Resolve Conflicts? |
| title_sort | human merging behavior in a coupled driving simulator how do we resolve conflicts |
| topic | Road transportation human in the loop human Factors vehicle driving |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10380755/ |
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