For modelling real road characteristics in a driving simulator, a measuring vehicle and an algorithm to generate virtual road models from recorded data were developed. Especially properties which affect driving dynamics and comfort are of great interest. Therefore a standard passenger car was equipped with several instruments to detect the road geometry and the longitudinal profile for describing surface characteristics. After a measurement run, the processing of measurement data is performed offline with a purpose–made software that semi–automatically creates road models in the formats OpenDRIVE® and OpenCRG®, which are widely–used in driving simulators. Therefore several independent steps are necessary.
Preliminarily a node–edge model of the investigated road network is established. An algorithm which allows an automated parameter calculation for the standard road alignment elements straight, arc and cubic polynomials, based on the measured, discrete GPS–waypoints was developed with regard to a realistic modelling. This reference line can be amended afterwards by further cross–sectional properties. For this purpose the software visualizes data from a laser scanner. Finally all roads are merged to a network by adding a logical linkage.
In the next step, a three–dimensional surface model for each road section is created from longitudinal profiles. The result is stored as an OpenCRG®–model, a 'Curved Regular Grid' where each cell contains discrete height information. In combination with the OpenDRIVE® roads this yields to a visual and haptic road description for the driving simulator.
This work was carried out as part of the research project VALIDATE (Virtual Automotive Lab for Integrated Digital Automation Technologies) at the University of Stuttgart leading by the Institute for Internal Combustion Engines and Automotive Engineering with the partners High Performance Computing Centre Stuttgart and the Institute for Road and Transport Science, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF ).

alignment, surface, road survey, driving simulator