An Objective Assessment of the Utility of a Driving Simulator for Low Mu Testing

TL;DR

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a driving simulator in replicating real-world winter driving conditions, focusing on its ability to measure behavioral fidelity and identify limitations in simulating snow and ice dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces an objective assessment method using a utility triplet analysis to compare simulator configurations with real-world driving data.

Findings

Utility triplet effectively measures simulator configuration differences

Simulator shows good behavioral fidelity in many measures

Poor match in dynamic lateral friction on snow and ice

Abstract

Driving simulators can be used to test vehicle designs earlier, prior to building physical prototypes. One area of particular interest is winter testing since testing is limited to specific times of year and specific regions in the world. To ensure that the simulator is fit for purpose, an objective assessment is required. In this study a simulator and real world comparison was performed with three simulator configurations (standard, no steering torque, no motion) to assess the ability of a utility triplet of analyses to be able to quantify the differences between the real world and the different simulator configurations. The results suggest that the utility triplet is effective in measuring the differences in simulator configurations and that the developed Virtual Sweden environment achieved rather good behavioural fidelity in the sense of preserving absolute levels of many measures of behaviour. The main limitation in the simulated environment seemed to be the poor match of the dynamic lateral friction limit on snow and ice when compared to the real world.