| 22 Jun 2010 |
Saurabh Mahapatra |
Formula Student Racing Team Eindhoven (FSRTE) is a team of students that participates in international
racing contests with a self made, single seated racecar. An important aspect for the
students to take care of is the finances of the project. They have to look for sponsors themselves
to raise enough money for the project to be a success. In order to persuade possible sponsors, a
serious and ingenious attitude is necessary and a self-made, realistic race simulator might be the
final key to get a sponsor on board. A realistic simulator could also be used to train the driver,
because he is able to get to know the circuit before he enters the real car. Also the development
of the car can be improved with the help of a simulator. Adjustments and tuning of the car can
first be tested in the simulator, before they are applied to the real car.
This simulator will be built usingMATLAB/Simulink, because this software package supports
all three parts of the simulator, namely the user input, the vehicle model and the visualization.
The user input is done by connecting a steering wheel to a computer and this can be done using
the standard blocks in the ’Virtual Reality Toolbox’ in Simulink. This toolbox contains also the
blocks, necessary for the visualization. A three-dimensional world and the visualization of the car
are made with the programming language VRML, because the blocks in Simulink work with this
language. An editor for this language is delivered with MATLAB and is called ’V-Realm Builder’.
For a more appealing simulator, some extra features as laptime and changing viewpoints are
included in the visualization.
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