Bruce Haycock

University of Toronto | U of T · Institute for Aerospace Studies

Driving simulators are highly valuable tools for various applications such as research, training, and rehabilitation. However, they are also known to cause simulator sickness, a special form of traditional motion sickness. Common side effects of simulator sickness include nausea, headache, dizziness, eye-strain, and/or disorientation, all symptoms...

Minimizing simulator sickness is crucial for ensuring the well-being of users and for guaranteeing the integrity of driving performance data. Here, we compared the effect of direct and indirect airflow as potential countermeasures against simulator sickness in a high-fidelity driving simulator, further exploring the relationship between airflow, bo...

Falls are a common cause of injury in older adults (OAs), and age-related declines across the sensory systems are associated with increased falls risk. The vestibular system is particularly important for maintaining balance and supporting safe mobility, and aging has been associated with declines in vestibular end-organ functioning. However, few st...

Recreational use of cannabis has been recently legalized in Canada, however, its impact on driving performance and safety is not well-defined. One experimental tool that can be implemented to better examine the link between cannabis use and driving impairment is driving simulation. Customized driving scenarios can be created to target and evaluate...

Falls are a common cause of injury in older adults (OAs), and age-related declines across the sensory systems are associated with an increased risk of falls. The vestibular system is particularly important for maintaining balance and supporting safe mobility, and aging has been associated with declines in vestibular end-organ functioning. However,...

Objectives: Older adults with age-related hearing loss (ARHL) are at greater risk of falling and have greater mobility problems than older adults with normal hearing (NH). The underlying cause of these associations remains unclear. One possible reason is that age-related declines in the vestibular system could parallel those observed in the audito...

Driving simulation has become a very useful tool for vehicle design and research in industry and educational institutes. This paper provides a review of driving simulator components, including the vehicle dynamics model, the motion system, and the virtual environment, and how they interact with the human perceptual system in order to create the ill...

Introduction/Aim: Opioids have a broad impact on the central nervous system; side effects may impact the psychomotor and cognitive skills required for driving. This study aims to evaluate the impact of chronic short-acting opioid therapy on driving performance measures in a high-fidelity driving simulator. Methods: Adult chronic pain patients using...

Visual motion stimuli can induce the perception of self-motion in stationary observers (known as vection). In the present study, we investigated the sensory processing underlying vection by measuring the human event-related brain potential (ERPs) elicited by the movement onset of a visual stimulus. We presented participants a visual stimulus consis...

Driving simulators are valuable tools for traffic safety research as they allow for systematic reproductions of challenging situations that cannot be easily tested during real-world driving. Unfortunately, simulator sickness (i.e., nausea, dizziness, etc.) is common in many driving simulators and may limit their utility. The experience of simulator...

The glare of bright headlights from oncoming vehicles is a common challenge experienced by drivers at night. Glare can produce discomfort, which may cause drivers to squint or avert their gaze, and can also cause disability in terms of directly disrupting visual perception. The consequences of glare on measures of driving performance specifically a...

Illusory self-motion (vection) can be generated by visual stimulation. The purpose of the present study was to compare behavioral vection measures including intensity ratings, duration, and onset time across different visual display types. Participants were exposed to a pattern of alternating black-and-white horizontal or vertical bars that moved e...

Illusory self-motion (vection) can be generated by visual stimulation. The purpose of the present study was to compare behavioral vection measures including intensity ratings, duration, and onset time across different visual display types. Participants were exposed to a pattern of alternating black-and-white horizontal or vertical bars that moved e...

Previous psychophysical research has examined how younger adults and non-human primates integrate visual and vestibular cues to perceive self-motion. However, there is much to be learned about how multisensory self-motion perception changes with age, and how these changes affect performance on everyday tasks involving self-motion. Evidence suggests...

Synchronization of multiple data collection systems is necessary for accurate temporal alignment of data, and is particularly important when considering rapid movements which occur in less than one second. This paper describes a novel method for synchronizing multiple data collection instruments including load cells and a motion capture system, usi...

Recent evidence suggests that visual-auditory cue integration may change as a function of age such that integration is heightened among older adults. Our goal was to determine whether these changes in multisensory integration are also observed in the context of self-motion perception under realistic task constraints. Thus, we developed a simulated...

An ongoing concern with helicopter simulations is that they often have an incorrect off-axis response to cyclic control inputs when compared with the corresponding flight-test data. The more commonly suggested contributing factors for this discrepancy include the influence of dynamic wake distortion, rotor blade elasticity, and unsteady blade airfo...

The Vehicle Simulation group at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies has a number of real-time helicopter models for piloted simulations, which are currently in the process of being updated and improved. These models were previously developed at UTIAS and represent the CH-124 Sea King, CH-149 Cormorant, and Bell 206 JetRanger....

The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies has a number of previously developed real-time helicopter models, which are currently in the process of being updated and improved. An ongoing concern with helicopter simulations is that they often have an incorrect off-axis response to cyclic control inputs when compared with the correspond...

The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies has a number of previously developed real-time helicopter models, which are currently in the process of being updated and improved. An ongoing concern with helicopter simulations is that they often have an incorrect off-axis response to cyclic control inputs when compared with the correspond...

In a flight simulator, the calculated aircraft motions are scaled down and filtered to fit within the envelope of the simulator motion system. A number of recent flight and ground simulation studies have reported that the simulator motion was too strong, when in fact, the motion was scaled down and filtered. This paper puts forth the hypothesis tha...

In a vehicle simulator, the calculated vehicle motions are typically scaled down and filtered to fit within the envelope of the simulator motion system. A number of recent ground and flight simulation studies have reported that the perceived simulator motion was too strong, when in fact the motion was scaled down and filtered. The authors of this p...