Virtual Drive. Fahrsimulation mit virtuellen Fahrzeugprototypen

The evaluation of vehicle interiors and Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) with respect to ergonomics and usability is an important stage in the vehicle development process, particularly in combination with driving tasks. However, traditional driving simulators usually require a quite extensive physical mockup. In contrast, the VR-based driving simulator VirtualDrive developed at Fraunhofer IAO allows the reduction of the physical components of the mockup to a minimum and displays almost the entire vehicle interior virtually. This allows the conduction user tests with driving tasks significantly earlier in the development process, at a point where no physical protoypes exist yet