pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

PacTrans PI and Oregon State University Associate Professor of Civil & Construction Engineering, David Hurwitz, conducts research in the areas of transportation human factors, transportation safety, and traffic control devices. Over the past years, PacTrans has funded a handful of research projects, conducted by Dr. Hurwitz, in these areas. In much of his work, he leverages the OSU Driving and Bicycling Simulator Laboratory and a significant array of traffic data collection tools to provide a more detailed understanding of how and why transportation systems perform the way they do. Dr. Hurwitz has recently utilized PacTrans Technology Transfer Success Story funds to develop the first ever Bicycle Simulator Calibration on Speed and Steering Latency.

“Bicycling simulation allows for the low-risk experimental study of human factors within transportation environments. A cyclist pedals on a stationary bike trainer, which is instrumented to detect the speed of the wheel and the steering angle of the bicycle. This paper proposes a speed calibration procedure to increase the validity of the simulator results, by using an independent bicycle computer for comparing the simulator speed…The calibration procedure uses general equations and techniques that can be applied to other bicycling simulators to calibrate speed measurements and improve the consistency of experimental data worldwide.

In the field of driving and bicycling simulation, simulator sickness has been shown to have a negative impact on driver performance. High latency, where the amount of time between operator input and the response of the visual field are mismatched, is correlated with higher rates of simulator sickness. The Oregon State University Bicycling Simulator was used to develop a framework for evaluating visual latency experienced in a bicycling simulator. A cyclist biked along a bike lane, sharply steered away from an obstacle, then countersteered to return to the bike lane. A relative measure of the steering angle was estimated with video data and was compared to the absolute measurement provided by the simulator…The study provides framework for transportation researchers to measure steering latency which could be used to minimize the mismatch between the user’s control of the system and the response of the visual simulation.”