University of Nottingham launches new research facility using XPI’s advanced driving simulators

3rd May 2011

Alan Davenport of XPI said: "We were particularly pleased to design this system as it enabled us to pull together a number of newly developed, advanced driving features with the latest high resolution projectors. In particular, it has award winning artificial intelligence driving the other cars, a high detail LIDAR scan of about 20 Km route in Nottingham and a modular network backbone linking the two simulator."

The main simulator, NITES1, has a BMW Mini with fully integrated controls and force feedback, housed in a 360 projection dome, seated on a 6 DoF hexapod. It has realistic sound, eye tracking cameras & other features

NITES1 is linked to static simulator NITES2 which has a reconfigurable cockpit in the centre of a large 180 cylindrical screen and multiple eye-tracking cameras. NITES2 can be used for driving, cycling, walking or any other input device and can interact with the NITES1 vehicle in the same virtual world or can be used independently.

Davenport said Previously we had only used this high level of detail from the LIDAR data in the most demanding requirements of F1 cars. Now researchers can compare the results from NITES1 with those of NITES3 (a real car with eye-trackers) on the exact same route. NITES2 is almost limitless and offers tremendous scope for the researchers