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Abstract

This paper reports two experiments conducted to measure human heading discrimination performance. In the first experiment, we measured the minimum heading angle of a linear heading motion that can be discriminated from the straight ahead direction - ‘Heading Discrimination Threshold (HDT)’. Uni-directional linear sinusoidal motion was used. Effects of different combinations of peak acceleration (20, 25 and 30 cm/s²) and frequencies (0.25, 0.5 and 1 Hz) were studied. In the second experiment, we also measured minimum peak acceleration needed for subjects to discriminate lateral heading motions and call it ‘Heading Detection Threshold (HDeT)’. We hypothesized that HDTs will be linearly correlated with HDeTs when measured in same frequency conditions. The preliminary result of first 7 subjects showed that peak acceleration magnitude was a significant factor on HDTs while frequency was not. A trend towards a significant correlation between HDTs and HDeTs was emerging for the 1 Hz condition.

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Heading Discrimination Thresholds and Lateral Heading Detection Thresholds When Exposed to Low-frequency Linear Motion

Abstract

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