Driving is a behavior that, like flying, is thought to be largely guided by visual information. Public safety demands that this privilege sometimes be denied, postponed, or revoked because of deficient vision. Unfortunately, the minimal visual requirements for driving vary markedly across states. Determining the minimal requirements for driving will become increasingly important as the prevalence of both elderly and visually impaired persons increases. The long-term objective of the research is to develop an interactive driving simulator that could be used to train, evaluate, and study driving performance in visually and physically impaired persons as well as new and elderly drivers. In Phase I, SINTEX Corporation will construct a prototype interactive driving simulator incorporating advanced display technology, as used in modern flight simulation. The specific aims of Phase I are:(1) to develop realistic visuals(the database) for a driving simulator and(2) to integrate this visual database with, initially, three components of a driving console: steering wheel, brake, and accelerator.In Phase II, the visual database will be expanded to include both a critical-incident as well as routine driving scenarios in a working prototype. The efficacy of this prototype will then be fieldtested.Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:At present, there is only a single, commercially available driving simulator and that system contains noninteractive visuals. SINTEX Corporation proposes to construct a prototype with a fully interactive and realistic visual database to determine the feasibility of massproducing a cost-effective unit to meet the large and unmet need for real-time, interactive, driving simulators.National Eye Institute (NEI)
