Research in the motorcycle industry is lagging behind research in the automotive industry. Especially with respect to safety, more research is needed, since motorcycles are overrepresented in the number of road casualties and injuries. Important tools in vehicle research are vehicle simulators. The use of motorcycle simulators enables manufacturers to develop new motorcycle technologies and could make motorcycles safer. Unfortunately, few motorcycle simulators are available, and even fewer are used in the development of new motorcycles and motorcycle safety systems.
This thesis evaluates the Cruden’s six Degrees of Freedom (DoF) motorcycle simulator and shows that it can be used in motorcycle research. To back up this claim, it is showed that a 15-DoF multibody dynamics motorcycle model is used and that the motion platform is capable of having the rider experience dynamics associated with this dynamics model. Furthermore, a human research approach shows that participants experience the same speed perception corresponding as in real-life and that the motion platform is necessary to achieve the highest performance form the rider with respect to lane deviation. Also workload and presence in the virtual environment were significantly better with platform motion. The influence of body tracking has also been investigated but has not demonstrated significant results with respect to the rider’s performance.