Identifying vehicle characteristic target based on subjective ratings from drivers

In virtual tire development, defining vehicle characteristic target is crucial to achieving the desired vehicle performance with the equipped tires. Vehicle performance is generally evaluated through subjective ratings by skilled drivers following SAE J1441 guidelines, as well as the objective performance metrics obtained via vehicle dynamics analysis. However, due to the scarcity and bias in real-world testing dataset, the vehicle characteristic target cannot be determined definitively. To address this issue, we propose a recommendation system that searches the unexplored vehicle characteristic domains. This suggested method provides virtual subjective ratings to enrich the limited real-world dataset from the skilled drivers. Moreover, we highlight the correlation between subjective and objective data using vehicle and tire dynamics simulation software. Based on this augmented data, we predict the vehicle characteristic target according to the subjective rating requirements. The proposed approach was validated through various experiments involving skilled drivers and various vehicle-tire combinations, showing 91.26% to 96.2% consistency in generated steering parameter domains. Domains of stability parameters show that one fewer domain was generated by a conservative driver compared to more lenient driver, which confirms the robustness of the proposed approach in accommodating individual driver preferences.