EFFECTS OF STEERING RESPONSE CHARACTERISTICS ON CONTROL PERFORMANCE OF THE DRIVER-VEHICLE SYSTEM.

A series of closed-loop tests was conducted on a lateral motion simulator and a proving ground to find out how the driver's control performance would be affected by the steering response characteristics of the vehicle. In any existing automobile with a conventional front-wheel steering system, the yaw and lateral acceleration responses can hardly be separated from each other. During the tests, these two characteristics were set independently by using a special experimental vehicle that could steer both the front and rear wheels. This permitted us to examine separately the roles that each of the two response characteristics play in a driver-vehicle system.