In this contribution a drive assistance function for older people was presented. The assistance function was integrated on a commercially available mobility scooter (Trophy 4W). The system adjusts the driving commands of the operator resulting in a less challenging control of the vehicle. The new regulation of the hand throttle decreases the velocity in the first 80% of the movement of the hand throttle (see Fig. 2). The system was implemented on a micro-controller, which adjusts the commands of the operator. The new regulation was evaluated in several test runs with older people. Three different test scenarios (180 turn, narrow passage, slalom course) were introduced. Altogether 14 older people participated at the evaluation. Each of them had to drive through the test scenarios twice, once with each regulation. The order of the regulations was alternating. A training run was done before the test starts to avoid effects of learning in the evaluation. In summary all participants had less failures and shorter collisions in all test scenarios, when the new regulation was activated. The mean run time of both regulations was comparable in all scenarios. Thus, the new regulation facilitates control challenges and simplifies the handling of the mobility scooter. Additionally, it was shown that the mean of both regulations are distinct with a probability of at least 99.5% using the students t-test. Hence, the new regulation increased the safety and simplified the handling of the vehicle without affecting the run time. After the test runs, the participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire providing subjective evaluation criteria. The results indicated that the participants were not able to notice any difference in the hand throttle regulation. For this reason, a more confined regulation will be implemented and evaluated in the future. This regulation should be much slower in the movement of the first 50% of the hand throttle. Thus, the operator should be able to feel the difference between the original regulation and the new regulation. Possibly, the number of collisions can further be decreased, resulting in incerased safety. Another interesting point of the discussions was the delay between the activation of the hand throttle and the acceleration of the vehicle. This delay was equal for both regulations. Some participants mentioned, that it was really challenging to control the vehicle safely due to this delay. It is planed to adjust the new regulation during the acceleration from stop in order to further ease the handling of the mobility scooter.
Evaluation of a drive assistance function for older adults
2012
6 Seiten, 5 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 29 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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