Welcome to the Virtual Reality and Simulation Lab!

History

The Industrial Ergonomics division (IAV) has since 1996 organized and developed an advanced Virtual Reality and Simulation laboratory with the purpose to support research and educational activities in the area of Human Machine Interaction (HMI). In the beginning the business approach was broad in order to explore many possible application fields. Architecture, medical simulations for mini-invasive surgery training and visualization of for instance blood flow in the heart were together with operator environments in various vehicle systems examples of the addressed areas.

Until 2001 the platform was a UNIX system. At that time we converted to a PC based platform and also refocused the business more strictly into the vehicle area, mainly aircraft and ground transportation. A couple of years before this we hived off a commercial firm with similar focus, which started to develop a simulator software system for driving simulators. The name of the company is ACE Simulation (ACE) and the main purpose of the simulator was to support simulator-based design and evaluation of sub systems for cars and trucks. The focus was still on HMI aspects since the driver is a critical part of the joint man-machine system. By simulator-based design we mean that virtual prototypes for future in-vehicle systems (IVS) can be developed using commercial prototyping tools and then be implemented in the simulator in order to evaluate the features of the system in a complete environment with drivers in the loop. In this complete environment we also include traffic scenarios in all kinds of traffic environments (city, highway, night/day etc.), which could challenge the system in question.

Figure 1. Laboratory overview.

In addition to the simulator activities we still have other HMI related projects in the lab. Here the workshop facility with its five PC workplaces loaded with many development tools are used for product and interface design. Examples are user interfaces for microwave ovens, remote control of interactive TV, head-up display information for forestry machines, interior design for concept car, and 3D air traffic information on aircraft displays. The workshop is also used for all off-line prototyping and scenario production before implementation in the simulator.