Modeling the Steering Time Difference between Narrowing and Widening Tunnels

Abstract

The performance of trajectory-based tasks is modeled by the steering law, which predicts the required time from the index of difficulty (ID). This paper focuses on the fact that the time required to pass through a straight path with linearly-varying width alters depending on the direction of the movement. In this study, an expression for the relationship between the ID of narrowing and widening paths has been developed. This expression can be used to predict the movement time needed to pass through in the opposite direction from only a few data points, after measuring the time needed in the other direction. In the experiment, the times for five IDs were predicted with high precision from the measured time for one ID, thereby illustrating the effectiveness of the proposed method.