Within the last years, the use of high end driving simulators for basic and advanced training of truck and bus drivers in Germany became very common. In February 1997 the Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement awarded contracts for the manufacture and delivery of a training system for driving school training of truck drivers. In the beginning of 1999, the Berlin Traffic Agency (BVG) awarded a contract for a similar training system for bus and truck drivers training.
The purpose of the MOD project, was the design, development and delivery of a comprehensive set of training devices. This equipment comprises a driving simulator (three simulator cabins and one instructor station), a facility for computer based training including training lessons, adaptation kits for the connection of real driving school vehicles and a complex software, called "Intelligent Training Control", which manages the training means depending on their availability and the learning progress of the individual trainee. This system was field tested from April to December 1999.
Based on the system developed for the GE MOD, in the BVG project the additional requirements for a bus driving simulator have been specified and will be realised. Beside a bus specific drivers cabin requirements like inside rear mirror view with inside bus scenes, bus stop scenes, a new Berlin specific database and additional review functions have to be realised.
For both systems, the simulator consists of one instructor station and three driver stations. The instructor gets a status overview on "what happens" on in the different driver stations: the name of the trainees and names and levels of the training lessons are displayed on his screen. Furthermore the system informs him on the learning progress of the individual trainees and alarms him, when one of the drivers is in problems.
The instructor has the possibility to get detailed information of one driver station. In this case all information out of this cabin is presented to him: the front view, the image of the surveillance camera, the position of steering wheel, clutch, gear box, brake, throttle, position on the road map and so on. Whereas usually the pre-programmed lessons are conducted automatically, the instructor is able to overrule the system and introduce different entries interactively.
The driver station consists of the driver cabin, which is installed in a monocoque, also serving as a support construction for the spherical projection dome. The complete monocoque, including cabin, projectors and dome is moved by a 6-DOF electrical motion base, which is especially developed for this application, the so called Spider system.