Field testing driver night vision devices

This paper summarizes the available methodologies to field test driver night vision devices ranging from vehicle mounted camera’s to head-mounted NVG’s. As in flight trials, a formidable challenge is to collect meaningful performance measures. Night vision systems for land and air systems show many similarities. The technology is similar and the primary goals are the same, namely to aid navigation, obstacle avoidance, and target detection. Good situation awareness and acceptable workload are key. Land testing differs from flight testing in the environment & test routes and the mission & operator. Standardization of land vehicle testing is aided by the possibility to lay out a track, highly narrowing down the path to follow. The absence of external reference points makes “air tracks” harder to achieve. Aircraft testing by necessity contains some degree of free flight, the pilot determining the path to follow, while vehicle race tracks can pin-down the route to follow. Quantitative data regarding position and speed are therefore easier to interpret on the ground than in the air. Regarding the mission & operator, driving tends to be the sole task while multi-tasking is the norm in flight. Compared to test flights, driving is relatively safe and cheap. A series of systematic performance measures have through the years been developed and validated for track driving and highway driving. These performance measures can be split in two categories, visual perception measures and driving performance (vehicle handling). The visual perception measures include distance perception, geometric judgements, object detection while driving, and situation awareness. The driving measures include dynamic geometric control tasks, navigation, and obstacle avoidance. A particular challenge in The Netherlands is to collect meaningful driving performance measures in (off-road) terrain. Night time driving trials must by law take place on an enclosed area, limiting the available choices to just a few military camps, familiar to each military driver. Off the road subjective judgements therefore remain a primary source of information.The literature provides well described protocols to field-test a night vision device in a vehicle on flat terrain. Less information is available how to set up systematic field-tests in accidented terrain. This paper provides a starting point for those planning to field-test a night vision device in a land vehicle.