Validity Quantification of Driver-In-The-Loop Simulation in Motorsport

The utility of any driving simulator study is determined by the simulator’s validity.
Requirements and measures of validity are to be defined depending on the application. The
present paper proposes a methodology which quantifies behavioural validity on the stabilisation
level of a driving task in near-limit vehicle handling. A set of metrics, capable of characterising
driving behaviour, is applied to race track and driving simulation originated data. Subsequently,
a distance measure applied to each of the metrics and an overall distance concept between
simulator and track operation is proposed. The methodology is tested in an experiment with
professional race car drivers. For this purpose, driving tasks are performed on a race track and
in driving simulation. For the latter, two distinctive settings are considered by activating and
deactivating the motion system. Absolute behavioural validity is identified to range between
40.47% and 59.29% across all participants and simulator settings. The proposed method allows
to quantify a change in validity depending on the simulator’s settings. The transformation or
trend towards track operation characteristics when activating the motion system ranges from 1.29%
to 3.31%. As a result, absolute and relative progress of simulator developments become readily apparent.