An unexpected role for visual feedback in vehicle steering control

Some motor tasks can be completed, quite literally, with our eyes shut. Most people can touch their nose without looking or reach for an object after only a brief glance at its location. This distinction leads to one of the defining questions of movement control: is information gleaned prior to starting the movement sufficient to complete the task (open loop), or is feedback about the progress of the movement required (closed loop)? One task that has commanded considerable interest in the literature over the years is that of steering a vehicle, in particular lane-correction and lane-changing tasks. Recent work has suggested that this type of task can proceed in a fundamentally open loop manner [1 and 2], with feedback mainly serving to correct minor, accumulating errors. This paper reevaluates the conclusions of these studies by conducting a new set of experiments in a driving simulator. We demonstrate that, in fact, drivers rely on regular visual feedback, even during the well-practiced steering task of lane changing. Without feedback, drivers fail to initiate the return phase of the maneuver, resulting in systematic errors in final heading. The results provide new insight into the control of vehicle heading, suggesting that drivers employ a simple policy of “turn and see,” with only limited understanding of the relationship between steering angle and vehicle heading.

Vehicle and driver attributes affecting distance from the steering wheel in motor vehicles

The current study was designed to confirm that female drivers sit closer to the steering wheel than do male drivers and to investigate whether this expected difference in sitting position is attributable to differences in the physical dimensions of men and women. Driver body dimensions and multiple measures of sitting distance from the steering wheel were collected from a sample of 150 men and 150 women. The results confirmed that on average, women sit closer to the steering wheel than men do and that this difference is accounted for by variations in body dimensions, especially height. This result suggests that driver height may provide a good surrogate for sitting distance from the steering wheel when investigating the role of driver position in real-world crash outcomes. The potential applications of this research include change to vehicle design that allows independent adjustment of the relative distance among the driver's seat, the steering wheel, and the floor pedals.

Enabling Global Experiments With Interactive Reconfiguration And Steering By Multiple Users

In global scientific experiments with collaborative scenarios involving multinational teams there are big challenges related to data access, namely data movements are precluded to other regions or Clouds due to the constraints on latency costs, data privacy and data ownership. Furthermore, each site is processing local data sets using specialized algorithms and producing intermediate results that are helpful as inputs to applications running on remote sites. This paper shows how to model such collaborative scenarios as a scientific workflow implemented with AWARD (Autonomic Workflow Activities Reconfigurable and Dynamic), a decentralized framework offering a feasible solution to run the workflow activities on distributed data centers in different regions without the need of large data movements. The AWARD workflow activities are independently monitored and dynamically reconfigured and steering by different users, namely by hot-swapping the algorithms to enhance the computation results or by changing the workflow structure to support feedback dependencies where an activity receives feedback output from a successor activity. A real implementation of one practical scenario and its execution on multiple data centers of the Amazon Cloud is presented including experimental results with steering by multiple users.

Report of Diabetes Review Steering Group

DHSSPS has published the findings of the Report of the Steering Group chaired by the Chief Medical officer examining services for people with diabetes. The report assesses progress against the objectives of the original CREST/Diabetes UK Joint Taskforce Report (2003). åÊThere is an overview of the epidemiology of the condition as well as an assessment of current service provision, identified gaps and emergent priorities.

Equality Information Steering Group (PDF 10 KB)

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Report of the National Joint Steering Group on the Working Hours of Non Consultant Hospital Doctors

The introduction of a maximum 48 hour working week for Non Consultant Hospital Doctors by 2010 will have significant implications for both Doctors in training and service delivery in our hospitals. This report focuses on how this reduction in working hours can be achieved and the many directly related issues that need to be addressed Download the Report here

The National Primary Care Steering Group - Progress Report

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The Nursing and Midwifery Resource - Interim Report of the Steering Group

This project arises from the need for an enhanced focus on workforce planning having regard, in particular, to the availability of sufficient nurses now and in the future. For a country which historically has had an abundance of nurses, the recruitment difficulties now being experienced by the health services are unprecedented. Up to the mid 1990s, there was a surplus of registered nurses here and other countries sent recruitment teams to Ireland in order to address their own shortages. As will be seen in this report, the concern of the professional interest groups at the time was the high levels of unemployment among nurses. The conventional wisdom was that the health services were training too many nurses for the jobs available. However, there has been a sea change in the situation over the past five years and the stage has now been reached where Irish health care agencies, particularly the major acute Dublin hospitals, are actively seeking to recruit nurses from abroad. Download the Report here

Final Report of the Empowerment of Nurses and Midwives Steering Group - An Agenda for Change

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Report of the Vaccine Damage Steering Group

Report of the Vaccine Damage Steering Group Click here to download PDF 1.1mb

First Quarterly Progress Report of the Implementation Steering Group on recommendations of the Report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance

First Quarterly Progress Report of the Implementation Steering Group on recommendations of the Report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance Click here to download PDF 56kb

Final Report of the Implementation Steering Group (ISG) on the recommendations of the Report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance

Final Report of the Implementation Steering Group (ISG) on the recommendations of the Report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance Click here to download PDF 235KB

Steering Group Report on a National Substance Misuse Strategy February 2012

Alcohol plays a complex role in Irish society. It is associated with many aspects of Irish social and cultural life and is generally consumed for enjoyment, relaxation and sociability. The pub often plays an important role in community life and is an attraction for tourists. More broadly, alcohol plays a signifi cant role in the Irish economy by generating employment, tax income and export income.However, alcohol is no ordinary commodity. It has major public health implications and it is responsible for a considerable burden of health and social harm at individual, family and societal levels. Steering Group Report on a National Substance Misuse Strategy February 2012 Click here to download PDF 2.7mb

Interim Report of the Steering Group on the Review of the Mental Health Act 2001

Interim Report of the Steering Group on the Review of the Mental Health Act 2001 There is a commitment in the Programme for Government to review the Mental Health Act 2001. In line with this, Minister Lynch appointed a Steering Group to review the Mental Health Act 2001. Their report is now with an Expert Group. The review takes accounts of the significant changes in thinking about the delivery of mental health services that have taken place in the last ten years (including the introduction of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD), the shift to community based services, the adoption of a recovery approach in every aspect of service delivery and the involvement of service users as partners in their own care and in the development of the service). Click here to download PDF 471kb

Final Report of the National Narcolepsy Study Steering Committee

Final Report of the Final Report of the National Narcolepsy Study Steering Committee In August 2010 the Swedish pharmacovigilance authority reported that it was investigating six cases of narcolepsy reported by health care professionals as a possible adverse event following the use of Pandemrix vaccine, used during the H1N1 2009 pandemic. This was followed shortly by reports from the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) noting there had been a more than expected number of cases of narcolepsy in children and adolescents that year. On 23rd September, the Committee on Human Medicinal Products (CHMP) of the EMA concluded in its initial review of available data that the available evidence did not confirm a link but that more research was needed.   Click here to download PDF 1.1mb