EFFECTIVE METHODS FOR DRIVERS RESEARCH WITH USE OF A DRIVING SIMULATOR

Paper describes possibilities to use advanced vehicles simulator combined with additional supporting research devices for measuring drivers ' behaviour. Analyzing drivers ' behaviour with driving simulators is a rapidly growing field of research, which also demands the interdisciplinary approach from different science disciplines like psychology and simulation engineering. Paper presents modern research methods in transport safety researches and devices that are used to understand better driver’s behaviour inside the driving simulator, e.g. Vienna Test System and mobile eye-tracker. Paper also explains a problem of simulator sickness that frequently occurs during the studies inside the driving simulators. Main advantage of using simulators is possibility to achieve full standardization of research conditions. Visualization system based on set of four projectors and cylindrical screen with 200 degrees of vision range, which allows to completely cover the range of sight of the driver to enhance driving reality. The view in the car mirrors is presented on three LCD screens which sizes are very close to the mirrors used in real car mirrors. The scenery generated by computer simulation is moving according to the car speed in the simulation. Similarly to the passenger car simulator, simulator of truck and bus is build based on visualization system which is composed of cylindrical screen, with two hundred degrees of horizontal range of view. Simulator gives the ability to trace functioning of few different types of vehicles