Two students in the doctoral course and 10 graduate students are in the road traffic safety and informatization group led by Associate Professor Nengchao Lyu. The members have a study background of certain traffic or information, and have an ability of doing traffic simulation and data processing.

The research team developed many science study experiment platforms based on study needs. The 8-channel UC-win/Road Driving Simulator is used for the platform to research driver's behaviors and traffic safety. The team has a vehicle for the driving test on real roads and a test platform common for vehicle and road including the intelligent road side system and intelligent vehicle system (that provides the basic conditions of original control algorithm design and the strategy test of vehicle road adjustment system). The test vehicle is equipped with GPS/INS, laser radar, image obtaining system, driving behavior detection system, and vehicle data acquisition system. Data of vehicle state, driving operation, road scene, etc. can be recorded at once.

Test vehicle and equipment

The road traffic system is complex and dynamic. Human factors having influences on it are also complex. To research on the relationship between human factor and traffic safety, it is required to design and test different scenarios, collect and analyze features of driver behavior. However, complex or dangerous scenarios cannot be tested with the real vehicle. In addition, there is no test environment for the latest driving environment (such as ICV and I-VICS). For these reasons, the driving simulator system is the best solution for his research group.

In 2003, the ITS center built a driving simulator based on the real-vehicle cockpit and 5-channel projection. Although this was applied for a lot of actual items, there was a room for the improvement towards the efficient scene edit function. The research group started to use UC-win/Road developed by FORUM8 to edit the scenes used in simulator and execute driving simulation in 2016. By the expansion development using UC-win/Road SDK, the hardware used for the existing simulators is newly cooperated with UC-win/Road. After constructing the new driving simulator, the group could test the driving simulations efficiently to accumulate precious driving behavior data, and achieved many science studies and company projects.

The following studies related to the basic driving simulation were executed.

1. A quantitative evaluation of driving load in different traffic environments in the project "The modeling of cognitive decision-making behavior considering the driving burden and how to improve the driving performance", the National Natural Science Foundation of China
2. A study on the driving characteristics at the busy and complex intersection in the "Project to expand one side of important road and its safety evaluation", the regional project.
3. A study on the effect of new road markings in the company project "advance alert at Zhuankou Changjiang Road Bridge in Wuhan".

The following researches were related to the newest driving simulation technology.

1. An investigation of load when the driver uses a driving support system conducted in the National Natural Science Foundation of China "Change rule of load on driver in different adjustments of human and vehicle".
2. The Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province "Optimization method of IoT driving behavior identification and advance alert mode". The simulation of driving behavior recognition and effect of intervention in the vehicle network and under the safe driving support.
3. "The recognition of risky situation during smart vehicle operation and the interactive control of switching", the Science Technology project of Wuhan City. The optimization and test of interaction between human and computer when driving the smart vehicle.

As you can see above, the center creates a lot of driving simulation scenarios that can happen on the real roads and utilizes them for the safety evaluation of traffic facilities.

In addition, it developed safe driving support systems and smart vehicles with UC-win/Road SDK and investigated the human factors by using the latest technology.

Driving simulation scenarios on different lanes		Driving simulation to test the safe driving support system
Simulation test of driving behavior at the intersection with expanded road		Driving simulation to test the man-machine switching during the autonomous driving

The ITS center is planning to expand and upgrade the UC-win/Road system and conduct experiments. As the future prospects, Associate Professor Lyu wants to improve the UC-win/Road Driving Simulator more. The ITS Center is brushing up the simulation cockpit under the lead of him in order to build a more realistic driving environment. It has already upgraded the inactive real cabin to the 6DOF sports cockpit and updated the attached hardware facilities.

Moreover, by using the UC-win/Road driving simulation conditions, the center is handling the popular intelligent connected vehicle in the cooperative vehicle infrastructure and smart highway field. It is also expanding the real-time interaction of multi-simulator.

The center is going to promote the science studies and industrial projects continuously. Specifically, it will realize the simulation reproducing typical scenes under complex conditions by using the development functions in UC-win/Road and SDK, and study on the driving simulation under certain environments and human factors.

Assoc. Prof. Nengchao Lyu and his students

VR data for Evaluation of road markings for speed reduction on Wuhan Yangtze Great Bridge The 17th 3D VR Simulation Contest Nomination Award To evaluate the most effective road markings for speed reduction, 14 patterns of road markings that encourage drivers to slow down were created for an assessment of their effectiveness through driving simulation. The driving scenario covers a long stretch of bridge pavement with a total length of 70 km. Two road marking patterns were selected after the driving experiment and were actually installed on Wuhan Yangtze Great Bridge. Award ceremony (November 14, 2018) Wuhan Yangtze Great Bridge and its VR data created in UC-win/Road