Imagine a seat attached to a platform, which is surrounded by a cage. So far, it sounds like the regular racing simulator, right? However, the cage is pulled by eight retracting cables and a high power winch system. Add a Virtual Reality set you connect the system to, and you have the ultimate simulator, one that can make the passenger experience up to 1.5G.
The cable-driven motion simulator is the brainchild of two research institutes – Fraunhofer and the Max Planck Institute’s Biological Cybernetics group. Dubbed Cable Robot, the machine is made of up to eight steel cables, winches, a racing seat and a custom made 176 lb. carbon fiber frame – which we better know as a rolling cage.
According to its creators, the winches are powered by motors with a total of 348 kW output. Moreover, the cables can be reattached in under an hour to enable the simulator to be adapted to different cabins and thus used for a range of scenarios.
When we said this machine makes for the perfect racing simulator that we’ll never have, we were referring to the fact that it’s a device scientists are using in the lab. You can’t just go on eBay and order one.
Furthermore, its large workspace and dynamic capabilities make the simulator suitable for a broad spectrum of VR applications. Therefore, Cable Robot may as well be used for flight simulation as well as investigation of basic perception processes in humans.
“This simulator offers us entirely new possibilities for studying motion perception with possible applications in neurological research into balance disorders,” says Professor Bülthoff, who is a long-time perception researcher.
There’s probably one mad game maker out there that is working on a newer, more expensive racing simulator as we speak. But as far as we know these petrolhead toys can cost anything from a couple of thousand dollars up to over 100k, such as the Full Size Racing Car Simulator. The later is a driving simulator encased in an F1 replica car.
Our point is, even if it’s currently a research device that will end up on the market eventually it would probably cost a fortune.
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