Data processing procedures for identifying driver/vehicle properties associated with the control of headway

This paper describes the data processing procedures employed in a field operational test involving the performance of adaptive cruise control (ACC) in normal driving with lay drivers. The overarching goal of the field operational test is to assess the influence of ACC on the driving task. The data processing procedures range from examining signals derived in real-time by the data acquisition systems (DAS) installed in the test vehicles to investigating time indexed records stored in a database format that allows flexible query generation and interconnectedness of the data. The procedures utilize the researchers´ understanding of vehicle dynamics, human factors, and control systems to discover knowledge concerning the driving process