Workshop Simulators Applied to Road Safety for Behavioural Analysis and Training

2nd international meeting on Simulator Design

SimuSafe project

How to use and apply these simulation technologies to improve road safety

Simulators are widely applied in training environments, especially in where safety is a primary issue. Simulators for training have been used in the aviation sector for ages as a mandatory part of the education, not only for student pilots but also for professionally active ones.

The use and application of simulators in road transport is an important aspect to be applied to enhance the capabilities of drivers and reduce accidents.

Simulators can also help the research community to analyse the behaviour of road users, useful for e.g. the design and testing of new Advanced Driver Assistance Systems or Autonomous Vehicles, and new and more effective training programs.

Eventually this should also lead to the higher goal of positive changes in the behaviour of road users through promoting a more respectful and safe behaviour. Cars and motorcycles are important in this approach, but also vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians are an essential part of the traffic ecosystem that must addressed.

The SIMUSAFE project is dealing with the use of interconnected simulators to analyse the interactions between road users in simulators, and the confidence in the data gathered in simulators in comparison with real-life road use and human factors.

Draft programme

15:00 Welcome and SimuSafe Summary. Marteyn van Gasteren, ITCL Technology Centre, ES

15:15 The SimuSafe simulator system explained. Rodrigo Varga, ITCL Technology Centre, ES

15:30 Preliminary SimuSafe results: Pedestrians. João Jacob, University of Porto, PT

15:45 Driver´s training for big transport enterprises, simulator opportunity. Patrick Hekkert, CEPA SafeDrive, NL

16:00 EFA Training Matrix: a new and more effective training programs. Manuel Picardi, EFA: European Driving Schools Associations, UK

16:15 Humans in the loop for capturing critical VRU behaviours in simulations. Ramakrishna Nanjundaiah, Phantasma Labs Limited, DE

16:30 Simulators and Training aspects related to the PASCAL project. Luc Vandenabeele, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, LU; Nuccia Fedel, Automobile Club d’Italia & Maxime Larique, UBFC (University of Burgundy Franche-Comté)

16:45 Use of simulators collected data for providing predictive road user models. Maria Nadia Postorino & Luca Mantecchini, University of Bologna, IT

17:05 Data for road user behaviour models: Naturalistic or simulator studies? Gustav Markkula, University of Leeds, UK

17:20 Interconnected simulation for the study of interactions between drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Chris W Schwarz & Omar Ahmad, University of Iowa / National Advanced Driving Simulator, US

17:35 Q&A: round table. Stéphane Espié, Université Gustave Eiffel, FR

18:00 End of workshop