Skill Retention for Driving Simulation Experiments
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Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU ETD Archive 2015 Skill Retention for Driving Simulation Experiments Nikhil Ravindra Sarwate Cleveland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etdarchive Part of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Sarwate, Nikhil Ravindra, "Skill Retention for Driving Simulation Experiments" (2015). ETD Archive. 509. https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/etdarchive/509 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in ETD Archive by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SKILL RETENTION FOR DRIVING SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS NIKHIL R SARWATE Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering University of Mumbai May 2013 submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CIVIL ENGINEERING at the CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY December 2015 We hereby approve thesis Of Nikhil R Sarwate Candidate for the Master of Science in Civil Engineering degree. This thesis has been approved For the Department of Civil Engineering And CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY College of Graduate Studies by Dr. Jacqueline M. Jenkins Department & Date Dr. Norbert Delatte Department & Date Dr. Lutful Khan Department & Date 12/3/2015 Student’s Date of Defense ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was supported by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and the College of Graduate Studies at Cleveland State University. Completion of this study was assisted by several individuals. I would like to thank my friend Jawahar, for his assistance in recruiting experimental participants, all those who participated in my study, Dr. Jacqueline Jenkins for her guidance and support, and Dr. Norbert Delatte and Dr. Lutful Khan for their valuable time and input. SKILL RETENTION FOR DRIVING SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS NIKHIL SARWATE ABSTRACT Whether driving a car in the real world or a simulator vehicle in a computer generated world, the procedural aspects of driving are very similar. The steering wheel is used to control the direction of the vehicle while the accelerator and brake pedals are used to control the speed. This similarity means that people who already possess the skill of driving in the real world are expected to transfer those existing skills to drive a simulator vehicle. Recognizing the need for skill transference, the typical protocol for conducting driving simulation experiments includes a practice drive, which affords participants the opportunity to learn to drive the simulator vehicle. Previous research has shown that some participants quickly learn to interact and exhibit consistently good performance while other participants first exhibit poor performance and require time driving, or repeated trials of a particular task, to improve their performance. One of the risks of driving a simulated vehicle is experiencing symptoms of simulator sickness. The occurrence and severity of these symptoms are believed to increase with continued exposure. Therefore, it would be valuable if the practice drive could be completed on a different day than that of the experimental drive(s). Such an approach iv would allow sufficient practice without requiring participants to remain in the simulator for a prolonged period of time. The possibility of having the practice occur on a separate day from the experiment was explored in this research. A repeated measures experiment was designed to test whether the driving performance during two separate drives would differ more when the drives were separated by a longer interval of time. The simulator scenario was the same for both drives. The scenario required participants to drive a one-way, three lane freeway segment and make 75 lane changes. Half the participants drove on two consecutive days, and half the participants drove on two days, one week apart. Forty-two participants were recruited from the Cleveland State University’s student body, staff and faculty through paper advertisements and person-to-person contact. Thirty two participants, 21 males and 11 females, ranging in age from 19 to 30 years, completed two drives. During each drive, data about the use of the controls and the movement of the simulator vehicle were recorded. The data recorded during each drive were reduced to describe the participants’ performance making lane changes. The accuracy of the maneuver was described by lane position and the efficiency was described by the travel time between lane changes. The two measures were then combined into a cost, such that a decrease in cost over a series of lane changes represented an improvement in performance. The total cost for each drive was calculated and used to compare the performance between the different drives and different participant groups. The performance of the two groups on their first drive was found to be the same (z=-0.673), illustrating that the difference in the characteristics (i.e. age and sex) of the groups was not significant. v Similarly the performance of the two groups on their second drive was found to be the same (z=-0.516). Together, these results support the notion that the practice scenario could be driven a day to a week prior to the experiment without negatively impacting the performance on subsequent experimental drive(s). Overall, the performance on the second drive was superior to the first drive (z=2.66) thus confirming that performance generally improves with practice. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. iv LIST OF TABLES ..........................................................................................................x LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 1.1 Skill Development......................................................................................2 1.2 Skill Transfer .............................................................................................2 1.3 Skill Retention ...........................................................................................3 1.4. Motor Skill Retention and Transfer ............................................................4 1.5 Learning to Drive a Simulator ....................................................................6 1.6 Purpose ......................................................................................................7 1.7 Methodology ..............................................................................................8 1.8 Organization of Thesis ...............................................................................8 CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................................. 10 2.1 Practice Scenarios .................................................................................... 10 2.1.1 Fixed Time Practice .................................................................................11 2.1.2 Fixed Distance Practice ............................................................................12 2.1.3 Self-Evaluation ........................................................................................12 2.1.4 None or Not Reported ..............................................................................13 2.2 Evaluating Performance during Practice ................................................... 13 vii CHAPTER III DRIVING SIMULATION EXPERIMENT ................................................................... 17 3.1 Experimental Design ................................................................................ 17 3.2 Driving Simulator .................................................................................... 17 3.3 Experimental Scenario ............................................................................. 18 3.4. Experimental Participants ......................................................................... 22 3.5. Simulator Sickness ................................................................................... 22 3.6. Experimental Procedure ........................................................................... 23 CHAPTER IV COST TRENDS ............................................................................................................ 24 4.1 Data Reduction ........................................................................................ 24 4.2 Individual Learning Trends ...................................................................... 26 4.2.1 Individual Learning Trends for Drive 1 ....................................................28 4.2.2 Individual Learning Trends for Drive 2 ....................................................30 4.2.3 Individual Learning Trends across Drives ................................................32 4.3 Cost Trends for Delay Groups .................................................................. 33 4.4 Total Costs ............................................................................................... 36 4.5 Summary.................................................................................................. 39 CHAPTER V TOTAL COST