The challenge of simulating traffic is a tough one. There are many possible ways of simulating the traffic, ranging from animation of cars over curves to completely autonomous vehicles based on vehicle physics. However for many experiments taking place in driving simulators, it is required to repeat the same experiment scenario for all test drivers. Building a scenario usually requires a long preparation work.
SCANeR II offers a comprehensive environment for building traffic scenarios for experiments. The MICE (Man Machine Interface for Creation of Exercises) tool the a graphical tool which allows preperation of complex traffic scenarios. The TRAFFIC module is the other side of the equation and basically is responsible for the simulation of the scenario vehicles.
- selection of the road network and the visual database
- adding vehicles and configuring their position, type and other parameters (MICE allows point and click style vehicle positioning for ease of use)
- writing tasks and rules
- definition of data channels for recording and displaying data
When adding a new vehicle, it is possible to define several important parameters of the vehicle such as the mathematical model, an ID, its itenary & autonomous behaviour,trailer and loading parameters and swarm traffic parameters.
The heart of the scenario is then defined with tasks and rules with the graphical user interface and available command set of MICE. The command is really extensive and allows you to set and get various parameters about
- the simulation execution (e.g. isTaskBeginning(), isScenarioBeginning(), ... )
- the vehicle status( e.g. getAccelerationVector(), getClutchPedal(), getIgnitionKey(), ... )
- the visual environment( e.g. getFog(), getRain(), getWipers(),... )
- the road network ( e.g. getRoadCurvature(), getRoadWidth(), )
In addition to the query functions above, several function so called "Actions" are available to influence the execution of simulation. Here is a selected short list of actions to give you a rough idea: goToRightLane(), setBehaviourOvertaking(), setBehaviourSpeed(), setSnow(), setTrafficSign().
The TRAFFIC module simulates the traffic vehicles in the scenario. The model used is quite rich in terms parameters it takes into account. Each vehicle can observe its environment (road network, the geometry of the road, other vehicles in the traffic, pedestrians) and decide its next action (driving to a given position, changing lanes, overtaking, acceleration/decelaration, steering and updating indicator lights.).
At this point, we shall rather stop going into further details and stay at this level of detail because the SCANeRII allows each vehicle action to be configured and there are quite a large number of configration possibilities. If you'd like to get more details, contacting OKTAL for an evaluation is worth the effort.