  The thesis presents contributions made to the evaluation and design of a
haptic guidance system on improving driving performance in cases of normal and
degraded visual information, which are based on behavior experiments, modeling
and numerical simulations. The effect of shared control on driver behavior in
cases of normal and degraded visual information has been successfully evaluated
experimentally and numerically. The evaluation results indicate that the
proposed haptic guidance system is capable of providing reliable haptic
information, and is effective on improving lane following performance in the
conditions of visual occlusion from road ahead and declined visual attention
under fatigue driving. Moreover, the appropriate degree of haptic guidance is
highly related to the reliability of visual information perceived by the
driver, which suggests that designing the haptic guidance system based on the
reliability of visual information would allow for greater driver acceptance.
Furthermore, the parameterized driver model, which considers the integrated
feedback of visual and haptic information, is capable of predicting driver
behavior under shared control, and has the potential of being used for
designing and evaluating the haptic guidance system.
