Large Moving Base Simulators and Automation Design for Heavy Vehicles - Case Study for HCT

Other conference contribution, 2016

This work aimed at analysing the potential for the application of large driving simulators on the study of future automated driving functionality. The case study was centred on applications for heavy vehicles, focusing on lane-change manoeuvres and automated driving. A simulation environment was created which hosted a model of a real world road, motion emulation with high fidelity truck dynamics, controllable surrounding traffic and a driver assistance system including autonomous driving. Two types of heavy vehicles were selected for this study, an 80ton and 32m long A-Double combination vehicle and a 40ton and 20m tractor semi-trailer. The final experimental set-up was driven by a group of professional truck drivers. It was concluded that today’s resources in terms of hardware, software and even knowledge base satisfy the requirements for testing such automated systems in a holistic way. Driving simulators are capable of providing much valued feedback as well as insight at early stages of function design which can effectively speed up, focus and streamline further development.