Flight/car simulator cuts costs by re-purposing industrial robot

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has built a cost-effective motion simulator powered by a single industrial robot arm that can handle extreme scenarios, such as spin maneuvers and even flight take-off and landing.

The DLR Robotic Motion Simulator uses KUKA's mass-produced industrial robot components, thus saving a great deal of the cost normally attributed to commercial motion simulators. The KUKA robot arm is strong enough to lift a car chassis, so it's perfectly suited to lifting and spinning you around inside a lightweight virtual reality cabin. Once you're strapped in, the top shell of the pod acts as a hemispherical projection screen, giving you a wide field of view. The arm provides pitch, yaw, and roll, while the entire rig moves back and forth on a track.

To take advantage of this flexibility, the DLR Robotic Motion Simulator features modular components that can be switched in short order to suit a variety of situations – from driving a road vehicle to flying a helicopter or other aircraft. That means it will have plenty of training applications, but it also looks like a hell of a lot of fun.

Source: gizmag.comAdded: 5 February 2013