Michelin installs Ansible Motion compact driving simulator to assist tyre R&D

Michelin is installing a new Ansible Motion Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulator at its North America Research & Development centre in Greenville, South Carolina, USA. The Theta C simulator offers virtual test driving and evaluation of tyre-road-vehicle interactions in advance and in parallel with physical testing, with detailed simulation environments. Michelin is the first company to take delivery of the Theta C simulator since the product was formally launched.

“Our customers rely on virtual vehicle models to gain efficiency, improve performance and reduce cost during the vehicle development process,” explains Rajat Aggarwal, tyre performance expert at Michelin. “Investing in this Ansible Motion Theta C Driver-in-the-Loop simulator allows Michelin to satisfy the needs of our customers for reliable vehicle models by providing robust and accurate tyre models. For this reason, Michelin has developed the Michelin TameTire tyre model, which calculates a tyre’s thermal and transient state as well as its forces and torques in both offline and online real-time simulation environments.”

Ansible Motion’s Theta C simulator is a compact self-contained cube simulator. Its small form factor contains a powerful underlying architecture, powerful enough to handle sophisticated vehicle and environmental physics models. This allows it to validate emerging automotive technologies.  Adopting a clean-sheet, first-principles design approach has allowed Ansible Motion to introduce the most immersive environment ever for a compact Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulator, whilst making the practical operation much easier.

“We’ve distilled the key engineering-grade componentry that’s required for human immersion inside a small physical space,” states Kia Cammaerts, director of Ansible Motion.  “We see Theta C as a fundamental building block for connecting real people with automotive simulation environments.  It’s aimed at delivering a practical balance between cost, complexity, and capability.”

The Theta C simulator was first unveiled as a prototype in May 2019, at the Automotive Engineering Exposition 2019 in Yokohama, Japan. Following favourable reviews and feedback based on hands-on customer experiences, Ansible Motion proceeded to introduce officially its Theta C simulator in October 2019.