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This paper describes a human-in-the-loop motion-based simulator which was designed, built and used to measure the duty cycle of a combat vehicle in a virtual simulation environment. The simulation environment integrates two advanced crewstations which implement both a driver's station and a gunner's station of a simulated future tank. The simulated systems of the tank include a series hybrid-electric propulsion system and its main weapon systems. The simulated vehicle was placed in a virtual combat scenario which was then executed by the participating Soldiers. The duty cycle as measured includes the commands of the driver and gunner as well as external factors such as terrain and enemy contact. 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.

The RemoteLink effort supports the U.S. Army's objective for developing and fielding next generation hybrid-electric combat vehicles. It is a distributed soldier-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop environment with a 6-DOF motion base for operator realism, a full-scale combat hybrid electric power system, and an operational context provided by OneSAF. The driver/gunner crewstations rest on one of two 6-DOF motion bases at the U.S. Army TARDEC Simulation Laboratory (TSL). The hybrid power system is located 2,450 miles away at the TARDEC Power and Energy System Integration Laboratory (P&E SIL). The primary technical challenge in the RemoteLink is to operate both laboratories together in real time, coupled over the Internet, to generate a realistic power system duty cycle. A topology has been chosen such that the laboratories have real hardware interacting with simulated components at both locations to guarantee local closed loop stability.

The U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are improving modeling and simulation technologies in order to predict the performance of Army ground platforms with a high degree of confidence. In order to provide a framework within which to evaluate the simulation technologies and provide a measure of the progress of the effort, a suite of virtual test operating procedures are being implemented. This framework is called the Virtual Evaluation Suite (VES). It is applicable to the study of ground vehicle stability, handling, ride, mobility, and durability over all terrains under all weather conditions. Although developed in order to evaluate simulation technologies, the VES may be considered a simulation that could be used to exercise any ground platform model that meets the VES standard vehicle interface.

The power system for the Future Combat System's (FCS) family of manned ground vehicles will not only need to satisfy mobility requirements, but also need to provide continuous and pulsed power for weapons, armaments and other auxiliary loads. Investigating hybrid power technologies has been an active research area for the U.S. Army RDECOM's Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) Power and Energy System Integration Laboratory (P&E SIL). The P&E SIL is located in Santa Clara, CA and is maintained by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). Current P&E SIL efforts include imposing realistic loads on notional combat vehicle subsystems in order to evaluate components, such as motors and batteries.

This paper describes an approach to integrating high-fidelity vehicle dynamics with a high-fidelity gaming engine, specifically with respect to terrain. The work is motivated by the experimental need to have both high-fidelity visual content with high-fidelity vehicle dynamics to drive a motion base simulator. To utilize a single source of terrain information, the problem requires the just-in-time sharing of terrain content between the gaming engine and the dynamics model. The solution is implemented as a client-server with the gaming engine acting as a stateless server and the dynamics acting as the client. The client is designed to actively maintain a locally cashed terrain grid around the vehicle and actively refresh it by polling the server in an on-demand mode of operation. The paper discusses the overall architecture, the protocol, the server, and the client designs. A practical implementation is described and shown to effectively function in real-time.