Ground-breaking Simulator Heading to Shanghai

Cruden has partnered with dSPACE, a provider of solutions for developing connected, autonomous and electrically powered vehicles, to supply the world’s first driving simulator integrated with a wet bench testing rig at the technical centre of a Chinese OEM in Shanghai.

The result of the collaboration between the three companies is a unique, combined driver-in-the-loop (DIL) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing tool for the development of automotive braking and steering systems.

Based on years of experience developing and simulating the Bosch iBooster system, the concept is designed to achieve real brake dynamic performance from a DIL simulator. The entire braking system configured by dSPACE – including brake lines, braking fluid, brake calipers, ABS controllers, valves and electrics, as found on actual production cars – is attached to the Cruden motion-based simulator’s top frame, allowing the driver all the benefits of a virtual test environment with the experience of real braking behaviour.

The Panthera software integrates the driving simulator with the dSPACE hard-real-time system and vehicle model.

Following delivery of the new simulator, the customer’s engineers integrated the simulator with their electric power steering (EPS) HIL bench, to allow the driver to also feel the steering from the actual EPS system.