Human Science Field
Aiming to make the Human friendly Driving Environments
Research Contents
The field of human science involves the study of automotive issues as they relate to human beings. Automobiles are made for our convenience, and they are of no use until we are happy using them. With this in mind, we investigate the comfort, safety, and functionality of automobiles from four perspectives: design, the people who use them, traffic flow, and the environment. We consider what meaning automobiles hold for people and how automobiles should look and function today and in future.
Upon completion of these courses, students will be able to work as experts not only in the automotive industry, but also in government, public corporations, construction companies, consultancies, and think tanks, and deal with issues related to road design, administration, operations, and environmental and disaster–prevention planning.
Larger size simulator
The simulator offers a realistic driving environment that can be used to investigate driver behavior.Three DLP projectors with a resolution of 1,280 x 800 are used to project over 180 degrees driver field of view, a front and two sides screens measure to 3,600 (W) mm by 2,450 (H) mm. Three 60-inch monitors are used to present rear images for the driver’s rearview and both side mirrors. Software is our original program, which we can easily develop in accordance with our projects. Measures of driving performance are automatically recorded for analysis.
Smaller size simulator
Useful field of view, which one can extract visual information in a brief glance without head or eye movement, is one of key abilities for driving a car. Limited useful field of view moving with eye movements technique gives new valuable findings on the driver’s cognition to surroundings. This simulator uses the same software as the larger one and can be extendable with multi-screen systems.
Our laboratory developed the estimation system of drivers’ behavior to select the appropriate intersection and direction to their destination. The map shows the scheduled route from Hakata station to the Kyushu University Ito campus. And the figure above map show the arrival rate of the driver who drives a schedule process for the first time based on a guide sign.
This picture shows the traffic flow at the merging point from 2-lane road section to 1-lane road section. At these points, drivers suffer psychological stress due to the frequent traffic jam and that causes the traffic accidents and complaints to the road condition. Our laboratory starts the research on the effective control method to avoid the large decrease the traffic capacity at these road sections.
Student's Voice
Toshitaro FujiiM1
- 1.What are you studying now?
- Congestion mitigation measure for traffic control through reconstruction zones’
In recent years, traffic congestion has been cited as one of the social problems surrounding cars. Since many expressways in Japan are overage, it is expected that traffic regulations in one direction from two lanes to one lane will frequently occur due to re-construction on the expressway in the future. Traffic congestion occurs frequently when the lane decrease due to traffic regulation. In order to solve this congestion it is necessary to find a best merge. It is conceivable that the merge method considering only traffic flow cannot be accepted by human psychology. I would like to propose an optimal merge method considering traffic flow and human psychology.
- 2.What are the recommendation points in this field and fun research?
- You can learn the relation between automobiles and human in our laboratory. There are many aspects of the relations between automobiles and drivers in not only the layout of the parts of car such as steering, accelerator and breaking pedal, many kind of meters in front of drivers seat, but also drivers psychological condition and traffic flow and congestions.
They all have connection with the development of new car. I bet you have interests to those themes. In the near future even if new technology such as automatic driving technology will be developed, there are no changes in the relation of human and automobiles.
- 3.Message to juniors and examinees.
- If you like cars and you hope to learn automobiles specially, our course will give you the best environment because all subjects are concerned with automobiles and you all can work aas internship students at the site of real development of Car Company. So it is best place for you to study and research what you want to do concerning automobiles.
Teaching Staff
| Faculty Members | Lab Location | Graduate Faculty | Education and Research Area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prof. Kazunori Shidoji | Ito Campus | Faculty of Information Scienca and Electrical Engineering | Traffic psychology, Traffic science, Kansei science |
| Assoc. Prof. Yoshinao Oeda | Ito Campus | Faculty of Engineering | Traffic planning,Traffic engineering |
