If you have worked on driving simulation applications in the recent years, you have definitely heard about SCANeRŠII. Although not new, originally developed in the mid 90eens by Renault, SCANeR II has been gaining popularity in research and engineering driving simulation communities. In this review, we will be looking at this interesting product from the French company, OKTAL.
The basics of driving simulators haven't really changed in the last years. Almost all driving simulators include crucial components like image generator, vehicle simulation model and instruction station software. Specific to the application you can add video recording, motion platform software, traffic simulation and even head mounted displays to the mix.
An average object-oriented enterpreneur mind will immediately recognize the reusability of these components. However evil is in the detail and it is pretty tough to generalize the software to fit all kinds of applications.This is where SCANeR II comes into play. OKTAL tries exactly this and presents SCANeR II as a product which can serve as a driving simulation platform with many reusable components.
As far as we know, SCANeRII is the only product of this type and it includes all major components of a driving simulator you can think of. Database creation tools, image generator(s), driving dynamics, cockpit interface etc. SCANeR II based driving simulation applications are many :
- Human factors for road safety
- Vehicle systems ergonomics for driver safety and impact evaluation
- Vehicle behaviour and architecture
- Perception (navigation, orientation)
- Basic and advanced driver training
- Road infrastructure (crossings, horizontal and vertical signs)
OKTAL (www.oktal.fr) is the company behind SCANeRII, which is available directly from OKTAL or one of the VARs. SCANeR II is a cobranded RENAULT and OKTAL software. Renault initiated the development in the mid of 90eens based on the experience feedback of SCANeR I and the Prometheus and TRaCS EU projects.
Despite having its roots in larger simulation programs, nowadays SCANeR II is strongly influenced by its users. SCANeR II User Group allows users to share experiences in both technicals and business aspects of SCANeR II based driving simulators. Technical advantages include sharing simulation data (results, scenarios, 3D databases ) and accessing the members-only pages of SCANeR II website for contacts, bug reports and documentation.
The user groups gets together regularly two times a year. The most recent SCANeRŠII user group (11th) was held on October 2nd-3rd 2006 in Paris.
To cover all features of SCANeR II, we would probably need far too many pages and too much of your patience. So we'll keep things simple. In the next page, we ask the question "What's in SCANeR II actually ?".