Fly & Drive Academy
In this case study, we’re glad to introduce our in-house initiative called Fly & Drive Academy. It was designed and implemented within our CTO office. This solution reflects an innovative vision on the driving and flight motion simulators.
The product is based on widely known virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. The Fly & Drive Academy platform uses a completely revolutionary approach towards simulated environments. It can be used in schools and facilities to train drivers and pilots thanks to its highly realistic degree of the simulated environment.
Client location
Lviv, Ukraine, London, UK
Industry
Media & Entertainment
Duration
Ongoing
Team
Internal R&D team
Challenge
Even though there are plenty of motion simulators on the market, most of them have certain limitations related to the simulated environment's realistic perception. As a result, they can’t offer high-quality preparation for drivers and pilots due to the absence of near-real-pace conditions.
The current situation in the motion simulators market and the quality of existing solutions have triggered our engineers to create a completely innovative device. Four Ages experts aimed to design a system that would provide a highly accurate simulated environment and also come at an affordable price.
Solution
We have created a motion simulator called Drive & Flight using VR and AR technologies. This platform imitates the load and pressure on the human body in cars and planes. Our solution maintains the correctness of the simulation even at high movement speed.
At the base of the Fly & Drive Academy, there are actuator mechanisms that were manufactured based on a ball-screw pair for drives. Such actuators have higher efficiency than worm gearboxes, which has significantly contributed to the accuracy of movements and minimized delays of the moving platform. They also enable the use of less powerful motors, which consequently reduces the overall cost of the product.
In fact, we have several variations of the Fly & Drive Academy platform, which differ in the degree of freedom (DoF):
2DoF platform moves the seat along two axes – pitch and roll.
3DoF platform operates with three degrees of freedom – pitch, roll, and yaw/rear thrust.
6DoF platform offers six degrees of freedom: forward/backward/side-to-side, rocking up/down, jerk, yaw, pitch, and roll. It also has haptic feedback with vibrations based on the information obtained from the vehicle's telemetry to simulate road bumps, texture, gear changes, collisions, etc.
Each variation (2DoF, 3DoF, 6DoF) of the Fly & Drive Academy platform is equipped with a drive system designed to move not only the seat but also all of the mounted simulator's controls (steering wheel, joystick, pedals, throttles, etc).
This platform was created using C++ for programming microcontrollers and several software tools like SimTools and FlyPT Mover for motion simulator configuration.
Impact
Thanks to its innovative design, our Fly and Drive Academy platform in all its variations grants users an incredibly high level of realistic perception and the feeling of presence within the simulated environment. Thanks to the innovative approach adopted in the actuator mechanism manufacturing, our VR simulator offers an extremely high accuracy of movements.
Overall, the Fly & Drive Academy products could be of particular value to schools for pilots and drivers. We also keep Formula and aircraft pilots in mind, intending that our VR simulators can be used for their training and skill enhancement.
Responsibilities
Creating a simulator for drivers and pilots from scratch
Technologies
Author:
Maria Roy
