THE DRIVER AT THE CENTER STAGE

In the end, as it is in a real car, the ultimate success of any driving simulator depends on the satisfaction of the driver, regardless if he/she is a pro driver or an every-day driver. The way the driver interacts with the simulator and the emotions he/she feels can easily be monitored in a controlled environment like VI-SimCenter, VI-grade's technical center for driving simulator technology.

Thanks to the collaboration with Pertech we have developed VI-BioTelemetry, a combined hardware & software solution that allows to collect physiological parameters of the occupants during driving simulator sessions in order to investigate their reaction to different conditions and scenarios. Key driver parameters such as heart rate, skin potential response, eye blinking, pupil dilatation can be monitored in real-time and synchronized with vehicle telemetry. 

Then, by taking advantage of well-known techniques found in sport medicine, relations and interactions of the driver to the vehicle can be identified while approaching a challenging corner with active controls, or while driving in traffic and assisted by ADAS technology. Human data collection and elaboration techniques available in the VI-SimCenter can then easily exported to the real world, making VI-grade's offer in the driving simulation market absolutely unique.

Moreover, thanks to our partnership with SmartEye, we can also equip our cockpits (both on static and dynamic simulators) with eye tracking and head tracking cameras. These systems are becoming more and more important to understand what the driver does while driving, what the driver looks at inside the car and if the driver is distracted. All this is then becoming essential when developing autonomous vehicles and studying how to hand over car control back to the driver. These are the reasons why our customers are asking us to install more often eye tracking systems in our simulators.