Internet Enabled Remote Driving of a Combat Hybrid Electric Power System for Duty Cycle Measurement

This paper describes a human-in-the-loop motion-based simulator interfaced to hybrid-electric power system hardware, both of which were used to measure the duty cycle of a combat vehicle in a virtual simulation environment. The project discussed is a greatly expanded follow-on to the experiment published in [1,7]. This paper is written in the context of [1,7] and therefore highlights the enhancements. The most prominent of these enhancements is the integration (in real-time) of the Power & Energy System Integration Lab (P&E SIL) with a motion base simulator by means of a “long haul” connection over the Internet (a geographical distance of 2,450 miles). The P&E SIL is, therefore, able to respond to commands issued by the vehicle’s driver and gunner and, in real-time, affect the simulated vehicle’s performance. By thus incorporating hardware into a human-in-the-loop experiment, TARDEC engineers were able to evaluate the actual power system as it responds to actual human behavior. After introducing the project, the paper describes the simulation environment which was assembled to run the experiment. It emphasizes the design of the experiment as well as the approach, challenges and issues involved in creating a real-time link between the motion-base simulator and the P&E SIL. It presents the test results and briefly discusses on-going and future work.