April 2, 2002
GW Center Driven to Develop Safer Driving Conditions
Experts Explore Safety at Virginia Campus
By Greg
Licamele
If you’re driving on the Beltway, or even Pennsylvania Avenue,
there are bound to be distractions, ranging from enraged drivers to
debris on the road. If you’ve worked a long day and get behind
the wheel, you might be drowsy, which affects your ability to respond.
Distractions, drowsiness, and additional driving disturbances are research
areas for GW’s Driving Simulator Laboratory at the Virginia Campus.
Using an actual vehicle donated by General Motors Corporation, faculty
and students from the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s
Center for Intelligent Systems Research (CISR) conduct tests with the
primary goal of avoiding crashes and collisions on the road.
Faculty, students, and transportation experts can simulate almost any
driving condition behind the wheel of the engineless blue GM, says Riaz
Sayed, a civil engineering PhD student. Sayed conducts research with
Azim Eskandarian, associate research professor of engineering and applied
science, and a cadre of professors in the laboratory. The researchers
at CISR examine all sorts of driving conditions, exploring the differences
between day or night, rain or shine, traffic jam or open road, the flatlands
of Nebraska or the hills of Pennsylvania, or complicated intersections
or simple roads. The vehicle is not just a four-door sedan, either.
The team can easily transform the vehicle into a sports utility vehicle,
a pick-up truck, or a smaller vehicle — adjusting how the vehicle
brakes, accelerates, and steers. Under all conditions, the researchers
are recording human and vehicle responses.
“In one experiment we are planning to test driver fatigue and drowsiness,”
Sayed says. “We put drivers under different conditions and introduce
different scenarios, then we monitor their driving responses and the
vehicle performance.”
Sitting behind the wheel, drivers use the gas and brake pedals as they
motor down the simulated scenario, which is projected onto a screen.
The responses to pedals, steering wheel, and other areas of the car
are measured and stored by computers.
“For example, we can look at the way they turned left or right,”
Sayed says. “We analyze it and develop an algorithm that tells
you this data shows this person is drowsy. We can then develop a warning
system from a signal to a human voice.”
Developing these warning systems are an integral part of the research
being conducted at the lab. Though automobile companies have their own
simulators, they also rely on research from universities. GW’s
simulator is funded by the Department of Transportation.
In addition to drivers, automobile manufacturers, and the government
benefiting from this research, GW students are gaining an upperhand
in transportation safety research.
“Graduate civil engineering students, with a concentration in transportation
safety, have the opportunity gain hands-on experience in this interactive
laboratory,” Eskandarian says. “It prepares them to undertake
similar job responsibilities in the industry when they graduate.”
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
