Motionbase Hexapod

DESIGN AND DEVELOPME NT OF 6-DOF MOTION PLATFORM FOR VEHICLE DRIVING SIMULATOR

Assoc. Prof. Dr Mohamad Kasim Abdul Jalil (Project Head) Design Department, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering 81310 Universiti Teknologi Malaysia kasim@fkm.utm.my

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Introductions

Driving simulators are often used in educational and research purposes. Driving Simulators’ capability in producing a virtual driving environment resembling real driving condition can be used to train novice drivers before they are exposed to the real world. Aside from that, driving simulators are important in data collection for road safety research, human factor study, vehicle system development and also traffic control device development. These allow designers, engineers as well as ergonomists, to bypass the design and development process of detailed mockups of the automobile interiors for human factor and vehicle performance studies.

Driving simulators range in complexity, capability and can be classified into 3 major groups: high, medium and low -level driving simulator. Figure 1 shows the classification of driving simulators. Some examples of high level s imulators are, the National Advanced Driving Simulator NADS in IOWA, USA and the Toyota Driving Simulator in Susono City, Japan which started its operation on Nov 2007. These high level simulators have sophisticated systems such as a dome with 360 degree p rojection screen for virtual environment generation. They are also equipped with a full vehicle cab and a large motion platform which can mimic the driving conditions. Low level simulators can be relatively simple which only require personal computer or gr aphical work station, monitor and a simple cab and driving controls. Between these two extremes is the mid-level driving simulator. Mid -level driving simulators can have adequate

fidelity, validity and realism; yet affordable compared to the “world class” or high-level driving simulator. With proper configuration and...