Modules, modules,... everywhere
SCANeR II is built on top of the well known distributed system architecture common to many simulation frameworks. This concept basically allows module processes to run on virtually any computer. These processes are controlled via a single instructor station which can also handle simulation and experiment specific tasks ( e.g. manipulating the traffic conditions ) as well as managing the distributed processes (loading, starting, stopping etc.). The following diagram shows SCANeR II's distributed architecture:
The approach naturally allows scalability and several projects running on SCANeR II have already proven that it can be used to build driving simulators of various complexity, starting from simple desktop driving simulators to high-end driving simulators with motion platforms.
All distributed systems need some form of control center which manages the module processes on each computer which is a part of the simulation. The Supervisor is the control center for SCANeRII, it is usually the first application that's started and allows us to manage other modules. The modules and their settings (e.g. on which computer they will be running) is defined in configuration files. The configuration files are rather simple text files but a special GUI frontend called Configurator is also available for editing the configurations files. On each computer, the SCANeRII daemon needs to be running, as is the daemon who handles the process management commands from the Supervisor for the host it is running on.
