Page 67 - ATZ11 November 2019 Professional

1 INTRODUCING THE MENTORING SYSTEM RACE TRAINER assistance while they are driving, FIGURE 1. The users are aided
2 CONCEPT FOR MENTORING SYSTEMS with steering assistance capable of scaling between strong and
3 AN ADDITIONAL DEGREE OF FREEDOM FOR DESIGNING ADAS light assistance and are also prevented from going too fast into
4 SUMMARY turns by overseeing throttle- and brake-pedal inputs. The vehicle
additionally uses an augmented-reality Head-up Display (HUD) to
show the racing line, sound to illustrate braking points and its info-
tainment system for a performance evaluation. These indirect
forms of assistance were not implemented by the authors but are
important for mentoring systems. The title figure shows a photo
taken from the driver perspective with a real view through the HUD
and illustrates the indirect and direct forms of interaction. The
1 INTRODUCING THE MENTORING SYSTEM video [4] shows a full training run.
RACE TRAINER
2 CONCEPT FOR MENTORING SYSTEMS
The name mentoring system [1] was chosen for ADAS which aim
to improve their user’s skill [2]. A mentoring system instructs the Interacting with the user through the steering column and the drive
application specific teaching goals through visual, acoustic and/ train requires a holistic design of the internal control loops and
or haptic interactions with the user and can demonstrate the goals the provided reference values. At first glance the reference values
through (partial) automation of the task. The BMW Track Trainer and the controlled variables for the control loops are derived from
is an example of such a system, instructing the goals through auto- the application-specific teaching goal: In case of the Race Trainer
mating a part of driver training on race tracks [3]. In 2006 it intro- this means time optimal driving on racetracks. This is not suffi-
duced a fully automatic teaching mode, allowing the user to cient to design a mentoring system, because the overall goal is not
observe the racing line from the driver’s perspective. In a tradi- time optimal driving in itself, but helping the user becoming a bet-
tional driver training session, the trainee can only sit in the pas- ter driver. The real controlled variable of a mentoring system is the
senger seat or drive behind a professional instructor. user’s driving competence, which is a difficult to measure variable
The Volkswagen Race Trainer improves upon this by also imple- and is only indirectly influenced by the control signal (steering and
menting a semi-automatic teaching mode, giving its users direct acceleration) of the ADAS.

FIGURE 1 The concept of the mentoring system (© Volkswagen)
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