DReye VR: Democratizing Virtual Reality Driving Simulation for Behavioural & Interaction Research

Simulators are an essential tool for behavioural and interaction research on driving, due to the safety, cost, and experimental control issues of on-road driving experiments. The most advanced simulators use expensive 360 degree projections systems to ensure visual fidelity, full field of view, and immersion. However, similar visual fidelity can be achieved affordably using a virtual reality (VR) based visual interface. We present DReye VR, an open-source VR based driving simulator platform designed with behavioural and interaction research priorities in mind. DReyeVR (read “driver”) is based on Unreal Engine and the CARLA autonomous vehicle simulator and has features such as eye tracking, a functional driving heads-up display (HUD) and vehicle audio, custom definable routes and traffic scenarios, experimental logging, replay capabilities, and compatibility with ROS. We describe the hardware required to deploy this simulator for under 5000 USD, much cheaper than commercially available simulators. Finally, we describe how DReyeVR may be leveraged to answer an interaction research question in an example scenario. DReyeVR is open-source at this url.
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This work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (IIS-1900821).