Multimodal approach to automobile driving comfort: The influence of visual setting on assessments of vibro-acoustic comfort in simulators

The growing use of vehicles in urban areas means that comfort in low-speed driving phase is an increasingly important consideration for manufacturers. Examining comfort in such situation requires not only field experiments but also the use of simulators to control the characteristics of the stimuli to which participants are exposed. Incorporating a visual scene with vibration and sound stimuli is one possible way of improving simulation conditions. Two experiments were conducted to measure the influence of the immersion relating to vibratory, sound and visual modes on comfort assessments. In the first experiment, participants were exposed to different combinations of vibration, noise and road videos (8 vehicles, 2 roads). The visual mode only led to a small bearing on ratings. Regardless of the mode presented, the level of vibration emerged as the crucial factor in assessing overall comfort. Little interactions between sound and vibration modes were also highlighted. The second experiment dealt with context given by the visual mode. Acoustic and vibration stimuli were combined with very different road videos, which modified participants’ expectations with regard to the situation. Results demonstrated that combining different visual settings with vibro-acoustic stimuli, no matter how much they were opposed, only exerted a small influence on participants’ comfort. In the end, with regard both to immersion and contextualisation, the effects of the visual mode are so low-scale as to be insignificant. Accordingly, they may be ignored in future similar experiments, which can make the experimental set-up easier.