In this study, the sensitivity of the foot sole to the vibration caused by the vehicle accelerator pedal among the system unit parts having direct contact with the drivers in the vehicle was investigated. To extract the sensitivity of the foot sole to the vibration of the vehicle accelerator pedal, a jury test of vibrotactile perception evaluation was performed over the range of frequencies from 20 to 200 Hz with different acceleration. For the jury test, three different uniaxial pedal vibration simulators were made. Vibrotactile perception evaluation was conducted with the uniaxial pedal vibration simulators, and the foot sole sensitivity of subjects to the magnitude of vibration for each frequency was measured. The crosstalk occurring in other axes while exciting the desired axis was verified. The verification of crosstalk allowed to implement the desired magnitude of vibration with an accurate excitation, and therefore securing the reliability of the experiment results. After the experiment, equivalent comfort contours were generated by quantifying the vibrotactile perception on the pedal vibration depending on the individual foot sole sensitivity of the subjects. On the basis of the equivalent comfort contours and the vibration data of an actual vehicle accelerator pedal, it was developed a weighting filter that is capable of reducing vibrotactile perception level so that the discomfort felt by drivers due to the vibration of the vehicle accelerator pedal can be relieved.

Vibrotactile perception evaluation,Quantification of vibrotactile perception,Equivalent comfort contours,Vibrotactile perception level