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DrivingSteering a car seems so effortless and automatic that we are barely aware of the control processes involved. However, the importance of continued visual input from the scene ahead becomes immediately obvious if we close our eyes for even a second - it doesn't take long to crash!To steer the car successfully the driver must match the road curvature and keep proper distance from the lane edges. Both require accurate visual information about the road ahead. What information must our eyes extract from the road ahead? Where on the road does this information come from? Our group has looked at the patterns of eye movements people make whilst driving a real car around different types of roads using our portable eye tracker. In general, drivers appear to look at the section of road about 1 second ahead of their current position. This remains fairly constant as speed of driving changes. This suggests a 1 second buffer between the visual input to the system and the motor action - turning the steering wheel appropriately. We also find that when approaching a bend in the road drivers look at or near the tangent point (or reversal point) of the bend - where the inside edge of the bend changes direction. The consistency of this result between subjects suggests that looking at the tangent point when approaching a bend is important for successfully navigating the bend. Currently active sub-projects Learning to drive: the development of visual strategies in driving How do our eye movements change as we learn to drive? We study the eye movements and search strategies of learner drivers during their first few lessons to see how they change over this crucial period of learning. Driving at speed: the visual strategy of a racing driver Driving a racing car differs from ordinary driving in 4 ways for the driver: (1) he drives at 2-3 times the speed, (2) he is not required to stay in lane to the same degree, (3) he must choose his speed so that he is going as fast as possible without losing traction on the road and (4) he tends to drive from memory, on familiar tracks, much more than a normal driver. As a result of these differences we decided to compare the eye movements of a racing driver to those of ordinary drivers. Members of the group working on this project Collaborators David Lee, Perception in Action Laboratories, Dept. of Psychology, University of Edinburgh Selected publications by the group Land, M. F. & Tatler, B. W. (2001). Steering with the head: The visual strategy of a racing driver. Current Biology, 11, 1215-1220 Land, M. F. (1998). The Visual Control of Steering. In L. R. Harris and H. Jenkin (Eds.) Vision and Action 1st ed. (pp. 172-190) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Land M.F. & Horwood J. (1998). How speed affects the way visual information is used in steering. In: A. G. Gale (Ed.) Vision in Vehicles VI ( pp 43-50) Amsterdam: North Holland Land M.F. & Horwood J. (1996). The relations between head and eye movements during driving. In: A. G. Gale, I. D. Brown and C. M. Haslegrave (Eds.) Vision in Vehicles V ( pp 153-160) Amsterdam: Elsevier Land, M. F. & Horwood, J. M. (1995). Which Parts of the Road Guide Steering. Nature, 377, 339-340 Land, M. F. & Lee, D. N. (1994). Where We Look When We Steer. Nature, 369, 742-744 Land, M. F. (1992). Predictable Eye Head Coordination During Driving. Nature, 359, 318-320
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This page is maintained by Ben Tatler (b.w.tatler@sussex.ac.uk) Last updated 26 July 2004 |
