Drivers’ Controlled Stimuli in Nonlinear Vehicle Dynamics Driving Simulation

Motion Stimuli in driving simulation aim to increase simulator fidelity and immersion by providing vehicle state information to the driver. Currently, there is no fully confirmed knowledge about which cues a driver processes to vehicle state anticipation in nonlinear vehicle dynamics. This paper introduces a Tire Potential Exploitation Rating (TPER) suitable for objective motion cueing evaluation in nonlinear vehicle dynamics driving simulation. TPER takes full knowledge about vehicle model and tire characteristics as a basis to define a distance concept between quasi-stationary, present vehicle state and the vehicle’s performance limits. The method is applied in an experiment with professional race car drivers. The driving tasks are executed with and without motion cues and metrics are derived from the raw ouput data of the TPER. The results show that the proposed method provides reliable information on the motion stimuli dependent exploitation of maximum vehicle capabilities. In contrast to other objective performance indicators, the metrics show similar effects between participants and driving tasks. The repeatability of results together with the temporal resolution of the rating method can make TPER a powerful
tool for future investigations on simulator fidelity in nonlinear vehicle dynamics.