The ultimate success of any driving simulator depends on the satisfaction of the driver, regardless of whether he or she is a pro driver or an everyday driver. The way the driver interacts with the simulator and the emotions they feel can be easily monitored in a controlled environment like the VI-grade SimCenter.

“Adding human driver data like pupil dilation, blink, and gaze enables our customers to further advance the understanding of how humans behave and thereby help the development towards a better real-world-like simulation.”

 — Diego Minen, CTO at VI-grade

Background

The VI-BioTelemetry combined hardware and software solution enables the collection of physiological parameters of occupants during driving simulator sessions to investigate their reactions to different conditions and scenarios. Key driver parameters such as heart rate, skin potential response, and eye blinking or pupil dilation can be monitored in real-time and synchronized with vehicle telemetry. Smart Eye XO, Smart Eye Pro and Smart Eye Pro Dx are solutions that feed VI-grade’s VI-BioTelemetry with real human data.

The eye trackers from Smart Eye provide over 100 output measurements at 30, 60 or 120Hz. Measurement categories include head position and head orientation, eye position and gaze direction, gaze intersection with areas of interest (AOI), blinks, blink speed, and pupillometry. Most measurements also include a quality value, enabling filtering by data quality. In addition, the Smart Eye solutions offer a 3D world model that is used to define the environment around the driver (e.g. cluster, HMI, mirrors and outside world).

Further, the implementation of Smart Eye Pro into the VI-grade customer DiM simulators: Human data collection and elaboration techniques available in the VI-grade SimCenter can then easily be exported to the real world, making this offered combination in the driving simulation unique.

About DiM DYNAMIC Simulator

The revolutionary driving simulation turnkey solutions from VI-grade provide automotive engineers with a complete set of innovative integrated driving simulators for a new-generation approach to system-level simulation. This allows companies to bridge the gap between virtual prototyping and testing.

The dynamic configuration provides motion feedback to the driver through an innovative moving platform with nine degrees of freedom, reduced overall dimensions, and a large travel range. The machine architecture is known as Driver in Motion (DiM), and for the first time in the history of motion platforms, its kinematics have been designed to ensure the best possible implementation of the motion cueing technology developed and tested by VI-grade. This family of simulators is based on a much more compact and considerably less expensive driving simulator architecture in comparison with conventional simulators with a similar workspace.

In addition, the solutions are fully scalable, so it is possible to upgrade from a static to a dynamic simulator while re-using all components already purchased. The driving simulation solutions from VI-grade are based on VI-DriveSim, the product that provides the core software environment for all driving simulation solutions from VI-grade. Please go to www.driverinmotion.com for more information