Motion Analysis of a Wheeled Mobile Driving Simulator for Urban Traffic Situations

The simulation of urban traffic has higher system requirements than that of motorway traffic for driving simulators. The motion information characteristic of urban traffic easily exceeds the motion envelope available for state of the art driving simulators. Augmenting translational motion by rail systems results in increasing moving mass and insufficient system dynamics. The presented wheeled mobile driving simulator (WMDS) moves on powered and active steerable wheels and solves the announced core problems. A feasibility analysis is conducted concerning energy, power and friction demand for a real world test drive on an urban traffic circuit. The presented results prove that a friction limited propulsion system, like the WMDS concept is suitable for performing driving simulation. Energy and power demand are also feasible with regard to state of the art battery technology. The promising new approach allows the combination of a large motion envelope with high system dynamics into a high fidelity driving simulator (DS).