Do you feel the difference? A motion assessment study

Since June 2005, a new moving-base driving Simulator (6 DoF) is in operation at the DLR Institute of Transportation Systems. Initial experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the participant’s ability to control a car within a virtual environment with different motion platform characteristics. In addition, the subjects assessed the quality of the perceived motion. The driving behaviour in the simulator was compared to driving in the real world with an equipped car (the DLR ViewCar). The parameters for the motion cueing algorithm were tuned for certain manoeuvres (curve driving and braking) in order to obtain different motion characteristics. The resulting parameter sets were used in the three sections of the experiment each consisting of three specific courses. The analysis of the questionnaires and the driving data revealed that the essential tuning with regard to longitudinal control was successful whereas further considerations of how to tune with regard to lateral control will be necessary. Comparing real and simulator driving identified the average speed to play an important role in simulation validation tasks. The chosen approach to improve the impression created by moving-base simulators showed to be promising and will be extended in the future.