The concept for the integration of tele-operated unmanned vehicle and driving simulator

The integration of driving simulator and unmanned vehicle by means of a new concept for better performance through a tele-operation system is suggested. Many innovations on the vehicle provide the appropriate automatic control in the vehicle subsystem for reducing human error. This tendency is toward the unmanned vehicle or the tele-operated vehicle. The master system has a host computer and simulator and the slave system is an electronic vehicle system. The slave vehicle system consists of three parts. First, a laser sensor system for keeping the safety zone from other front vehicles, an ultrasonic sensor system for keeping the side ranges from the lane. Second, an acceleration system and brake control system for longitudinal motion control. Third, a steering control system for lateral motion control. In this research, mechanical and electronic parts are implemented to operate an unmanned vehicle. The driving simulator has a 6 degree-of-freedom motion-base and 3 channel fixed-based simulator. They are fully interactive, highly realistic and based on a personal computer can be updated easily. The driving simulator is constituted by the 6-axes Stewart platform for the motion base. This paper focuses on the integration of a remote controlled unmanned vehicle and driving simulator which is half size and its actuator is an AC servo motor. The vehicle mainly controlled lateral direction and longitudinal direction with actuators for controlling vehicle movement and sensors for a closed-loop system.