Creating headlight glare in a driving simulator

The glare of bright headlights from oncoming vehicles is a common challenge experienced by drivers at night. Glare can produce discomfort, which may cause drivers to squint or avert their gaze, and can also cause disability in terms of directly disrupting visual perception. The consequences of glare on measures of driving performance specifically are not well described, partially due to safety issues in attempting to evaluate glare effects during on-road driving. Driving simulators, however, provide a particularly useful interface through which to investigate these effects in a safe and systematic manner. That said, very few simulators include integrated glare effects, likely because these effects simply are not achievable with conventional display systems. Therefore, we developed a novel glare simulator that is able to reproduce the effect of bright headlights from oncoming traffic using a novel hybrid display system, combining traditional projectors with panels of high intensity light emitting diodes (LEDs) mounted on a robotic actuator. Each LED on these panels can be independently modulated, allowing the grid to present lights of various sizes and intensities in order to simulate oncoming vehicle headlights over a broad range of distances. In this paper the system design and the mapping to synchronize the two display systems are described, and the resultant effects are illustrated. Overall, glare is a common, yet problematic challenge during driving, therefore understanding precisely how this affects driving performance across different driver populations is of high importance. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.