Immersive Simulation Validity

Topic leaders: Andrea Simone (UNIBO) and Hocine Imine (Uni. Eiffel)

The “Immersive simulation validity” topic focusses on the development of valid simulators to study the behaviour of road users. It involves iterations between development and evaluation. The ultimate goal is to place participants in virtual traffic situations in which they adopt natural behaviours without learning. The research addresses four sub-topics: populating virtual scenes, improving simulator components, designing new motion platforms, and validating these tools in real-world scenarios. The skills of Uni. Eiffel on the deployment of driving simulators and the experience of UNIBO on tests in real scenarios are integrated within a process of validation of the data obtained from the simulators. In particular, the sub-topics are mainly related to the development of tools for improving the dynamics of the vehicle simulator. Uni. Eiffel is devoted to develop a detailed simulator dynamic model which takes the dynamics parameters of the simulated vehicle into account with enough precision to enable the study of vehicle dynamics on the simulator. This also makes it possible to identify and apply appropriate motion cueing algorithms for the motion platform with respect to the physical limits of the platform. In order to validate these algorithms, many tests have been carried out with participants, using driving performance measures and objective criteria. Concurrently, UNIBO conducts experimental tests with real instrumented cars, implementing the same scenarios as Uni. Eiffel in order to compare driving behaviours in real and simulated situations. N. Ghasemi was the co-supervised PhD student who developed these activities. Furthermore, in the Marie-Curie Project SAFERUP which supports the PhD contract of M. Shoman, we mean to study the effects of road surface characteristics & geometries on Safer Users’ Behaviour, focussing on bicycles. The approach is to consider the cyclist as a control system, for whom we mean to determine the actions (handlebar angle, pressure on the pedals, etc.) which will ensure comfort and safety. Uni. Eiffel hopes to better understand cyclists’ behaviour and to improve the quality of the dynamical model of its bicycle simulator. UNIBO concurrently runs analyses on the most relevant urban accidents, in order to identify their causes and consequences with respect to the characteristics of the road (profile, skid-resistance, radius of curvature, etc.), with a particular focus on elderly people and wheel chair users.

The synergy stands at the level of the interaction between the characteristics of the road and the dynamics of the simulator. There are already several co-publications, two PhD contracts, and several co-supervised Master internships. There are perspectives to connect the Virtual Reality facilities that are planned by Uni. Eiffel and its partners in the MobiSat project on the campus of Versailles with those that are planned by UNIBO, with the result of virtually expanding the scale of each facility for the collection of behavioural data in simulated conditions.