Haptic Virtual Prototyping for Design and Assessment of Gear-shifts

Abstract

Traditionally, a designer forms the link between the customer and the final product by interpreting customer demands and desires and translating them into geometry. By combining 3D CAD systems and software tools for analysis, a designer is able to examine whether the created geometry complies with these customer demands and desires. However, in the process of translation and examination, a measure of subjectivity is added to the design. A virtual prototyping environment (VPE) can be created by utilizing Virtual Reality technology, in which the customer is able to specify the Product’s behavior in a direct way, i.e. without designer interference. In this way, not only is the design process is made more objective, but also significant amounts of time and money are saved since less physical prototypes are required. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a VPE for manually operated gearboxes in passenger cars. Based on measurements taken of the gearlever on a test vehicle, an application is designed that simulates its gearshift feel. This application incorporates a commercially available haptic device. In order to determine whether the virtual gearshift feel conforms with the real gearshift feel, a usability test is performed. The test group considered the feel of the simulated “virtual” gearshift to be quite similar to the “real” gearshift feel of a test vehicle. By further developing this VPE, it should become possible to define gearshift feel by customer assessment through haptic simulation, after which the physical gearbox is designed in such a way that it matches the preferred shifting behavior.