New Transportation Systems for Elderly People

需要新的运输系统，使年轻人和老年人都受益。在1998-2000年的项目中，我们提出了微型车作为解决方案之一。由于本研究的目标是实现这样的车辆，因此我们将重点放在了实现障碍的机械手和交通安全性的改进上，明确了实现车辆的要点，并为新的运输系统奠定了基础技术。首先，建立了一个移动基座驾驶模拟器，用于收集老年驾驶员的驾驶特征，并在常见情况下和综合条件下进行评估。我们提出了基于这些数据的驱动操纵装置。评价结果证明了手集成操作的车辆的优势。其次，我们评估的机械手，这是有效的驾驶模拟器实验，利用微型电子车。最后，从茨木县重尾町的居民中选择了年轻人和老年人作为研究对象。我们要求他们使用微型电动车约三个月，并填写调查问卷。结果显示了车辆的实用性，并提出了与实现这种车辆有关的问题。

New transportation systems which are of benefit to both younger and older people are needed. We had proposed a micro vehicle as one of the solutions in the past project conducted through 1998-2000. Because the goal of this study is to realize such a vehicle, we focused on the improvement of manipulators and safety in the traffic, which are obstacles to the realization.Our study clarified the points for the accomplishment of the vehicle and established the basic technology for the new transportation systems.First, a moving-base driving simulator has built to collect driving characteristics of older drivers and to conduct evaluation under the common situations and the integrated conditions. We proposed driving manipulating devices based on these data. Evaluation results proved the advantage of hand-integrated manipulation of the vehicle.Secondly, we evaluated the manipulators, which were effective in the driving simulator experiments, utilizing a micro electronic vehicle. The results showed the suitable settings of steering gear-ratio and the effectiveness of hand-integrated manipulators.And finally, we selected both younger and older subjects from the people in Juo town, Ibaraki prefecture. We asked them to use micro electric vehicle for about three months and to fill in questionnaires. The results showed the usefulness of the vehicle and made the point at issue related to the realization of such a vehicle clear.