Cruden’s Hexatech motion platform offers six degrees of freedom and forms the basis of more advanced simulators
entertainment market. All Cruden’s simulators for
industrial use are based on the Hexatech architecture, comprising six actuators that connect the triangular base with the top platform. Crucially, as commercial director, Frank Kalff, points out, it offers six degrees of freedom. These are three linear modes along the x, y and z axis and three rotational modes around those axes. ‘Without it,’ he asserts, ‘you
cannot excite the vestibular system in your brain to trick it,
However, he explains that, by introducing perceptual cues into the picture, drivers create their own internal image of the world. The illusion begins as the virtual car sets off. The platform moves forward to give an initial feeling of acceleration, but it can’t keep moving because it runs out of travel, so it then tips backwards under the perception of the driver until it uses gravity to keep that feeling of acceleration.’ With the Hexatech arrangement, the platform can be moved around a virtual
You trick the driver
into giving information to his brain through all the sensors he has
Toyota Motorsport’s F1 simulator in Cologne, Germany, the highest spec commercially available simulator of its type
training pilots. This allowed it to develop expertise with control systems and force loops and even to start selling its technology outside the company. Then, when Fokker hit financial problems in 1996, the staff of the simulator department recognised its commercial potential and completed a successful a management buy out. By 2001, the company was
starting to supply technology for automotive simulation. It soon realised that, unlike flight simulation, there were no other
suppliers in the market. So, rather than supplying retailers of simulators, it started selling simulators direct into the automotive industry. With vehicle dynamicists and image generation expertise in-house, it was soon supplying turn-key solutions to research institutes and universities. Now it also has several F1 teams and major motor manufacturers on its customer list and, from this position as a supplier of professional simulators, has since branched out into the
because that is what you are doing in a simulator, to believe you are doing what you are not doing. You trick the driver into giving information to his brain through all the sensors he has, which include haptic sensors, hands, bottom, shoulders, audio and visual. All these things are sensors – they capture information and send it to your brain. That then determines what you see but, more importantly, what you feel.’ Kalff concedes that you
cannot recreate all the forces and movements of a real racecar, at least not without spending a phenomenal amount of money and using a huge amount of space.
centre above the driver’s head, allowing the inertially-induced feeling of acceleration to be seamlessly transformed into the gravitational pull. Meanwhile, it is feeding in
little vertical movements to give the feeling of the car moving over a road surface. These speed up as the car accelerates to tell the driver he’s going faster. Combined with the sound of rising revs and the movement of the image on the ’screen, it stimulates the driver’s senses to create the illusion of an accelerating racecar.
The same principles apply
to braking and cornering. But when creating a useful tool for
September 2011 •
www.racecar-engineering.com 33
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