A flexible application framework for distributed real time systems with applications in PC based driving simulators

For the research at the IZVW (Center for Traffic Sciences at the University of Würzburg) a driving simulator was build, that consists of 11 personal computers with a 180° front projection system, 3 rear projections and a 6-6 stewart platform. Also, three other driving simulators consisting of one, two and five personal computers are used at the IZVW for different experiments. One desired goal of the driving simulator software is, that the software framework would allow to adapt very felxibly to the most different experiments. A special aim was to easily integrate different driver support systems. Also the software must ensure, that the experiments can be performed unchanged on each simulator as far as hardware resources allow it. These goals forbid hard-coded connections of the single parts of the simulator software, e. g. vehicle dynamics simulation and driver interface. In this article, we give an overview of the software framework of the IZVW driving simulators. __________________________________________________________________________________________ DSC2001 – Sophia Antipolis – September 2001 __________________________________________________________________________________________