Generalized modeling approach for real-time simulation

Abstract

The test drive of a customized vehicle by the customer was not possible prior to the existence of the simulators. Thus, leaving a customer to trust the industry and make compromises while selecting a vehicle. Although, simulators provide a virtual experience of a vehicle, but all the available vehicle models are preconfigured and hence the user can only experience those. The main idea behind this research is to enable the user to experience a self-customized vehicle and communicate the will of customer directly to the manufacturer. Therefore, the future prospect of this research is to merge both customer and manufacturer, during the innovation phase of a development project by developing a tool (modeling configurator) that can serve the purpose.

Since the simulation environment in this research is provided by Mevea Solver, which create model simulation file in XML format, hence, leading to the editing of preprogrammed XML files. This is achieved by developing a generic modeling configurator by the use of object-oriented programming in Matlab editor environment. Also to make the modeling configurator more user-friendly, App building function is utilized to create a user-interactive graphical user interface. The attributes selected for customization are: engine modeling (using polynomial equation), tire modeling (using section width and aspect ratio) and gearbox modeling (using geometric ratios). The algorithms for modeling of these attributes are based on generic mathematical model extracted from literature, whereas, the algorithm for modification of XML files is also generic in nature and can be applicable to any vehicle. In other words, to carry out a generalized approach for any class of vehicle, this research includes three different type of vehicle models: tractor, wheel loader, and fork lifter as case studies.