An Experimental Space for Conducting Controlled Driving Behavior Studies based on a Multiuser Networked 3D Virtual Environment and the Scenario Markup Language

A Cyber‐Physical System Simulator for Risk‐Free Transport Studies

“…The robustness of DiVE as a massively multiuser networked technology is evidenced by a number of experiments conducted by the National Institute of Informatics with several partner institutions. Multiuser driving behavior study on traffic congestion with four user drivers and 100 traffic simulator‐controlled cars, in collaboration with the Smart Transport Research Centre (STRC) at Queensland University of Technology, Australia (Gajananan et al., ). Multiuser driving behavior study on ecosafe driving practice with 41 drivers, in collaboration with Hiroo Gakuen Junior and Senior High School, Japan (Madruga et al., ). Several multiuser studies on driving and travel behavior under emergency evacuation conditions with up to 45 travelers, in collaboration with Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (van den Berg et al., ). Multiuser ecodriving training study based on distributed constraint optimization with three drivers and up to 27 computer‐controlled cars (Madruga and Prendinger, ). …”

“…(a) Multiuser driving experiment using driving gear (i.e., steering wheel, pedals) (Gajananan et al., ); (b) Multiuser travel choice experiment with mouse‐based driving input (van den Berg et al., ).…”

“…In summary, the review of existing work suggests that virtual environments may approximate reality and allow us to collect important behavioral data (Washburn and Cruz-Casas, 2010;Sun and Elefteriadou, 2012). It is important to note that except the work of Gajananan et al (2013), none of the available simulators supports multiuser driving and hence many traffic phenomena involving multiple drivers could not yet be adequately addressed.…”

Editorial IEEE Transactions on Human–Machine Systems: Year in Review for 2013

“…Gajananan and colleagues [73] present a framework for conducting controlled driving behavior studies using multiuser networked 3-D virtual environments. The framework supports: 1) the simulation of multiuser immersive driving; 2) the visualization of surrounding traffic; 3) the specification and creation of reproducible traffic scenarios; and 4) the collection of meaningful driving behavior data.…”

“…The authors investigate the "rubbernecking" phenomenon (slowing down of a driver due to an accident on the opposite side of the road) and its effect on the following drivers. In [73], the Scenario Markup Language (SML) framework, which is composed of: 1) SML to specify dynamic traffic situations and 2) the scenario control system to ensure the reproducibility of particular traffic situations has been intrduced. To demonstrate the framework, they specified the traffic accident scenario in SML and conducted a study about the rubbernecking phenomenon.…”