Tech, UVa Take Show on the Road

Researchers plan to use a simulator to study effects of illness and prescription drugs on driving.

Carilion Biomedical Institute Provided $113,000

By MIKE GANGLOFF

Officials at the Carilion Biomedical Institute hope a virtual highway in a Virginia Tech laboratory will become a shortcut between Blacksburg and Charlottesville. "The big thing here was the fact that Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia were working together," explained Sam English, the biomedical institute's research projects manager, after Monday's demonstration of a new driving simulator.

Developed with $113,000 provided by the biomedical institute, the simulator is bound for the University of Virginia, where researchers plan to use it in ongoing studies of the effects of illness and prescription drugs on driving. It also may be a prototype for machines that will be used for driver testing at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles or training at driving schools.

The not-for-profit biomedical institute, based in Roanoke, often looks for ventures with more immediate commercial application. English said it backed the simulator project because it fostered Tech-UVa cooperation - and research that could attract wider funding.

The simulator's appearance recalls the booth-style driving games popular in arcades, and like them it tries "to fool the driver into believing they're in a real driving situation," said John Casali, a professor in Tech's Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the leader of the 14-month effort to develop the simulator.

But despite using computer mock-ups of Charlottesville-area roads provided by a team from Northeastern University, the simulator provides a ride that's hard to mistake for the real thing - or even for the video game experiences that are a familiar comparison for many people.

Clunky controls and graphics will improve as the "proof of concept" version is developed farther, said William Penhallegon, an engineering master's student who worked on the project. While games may be "quite a bit more advanced" in terms of graphics, the Tech simulator has the edge in data collection, recording lane position, speed and other facets of a driver's performance for later evaluation.

"It was designed with different things in mind," added Charles Parnell, another graduate student who worked on the project. "It's definitely a research tool, not a game."

Daniel Cox, a professor in UVa's psychiatric medicine department who plans to start using the simulator next month, recalled that when he began simulator research a decade ago, he started by contacting the developers of what was then the most realistic car-and-driver game, Atari's "Hard Drivin'."

That led to development of a number of simulators, but game developers "don't build anything that's expected to last more than a couple of years," Cox said. Tech's simulator should be more open-ended, which could lead to specialized, commercial uses, Cox said.

Past the pixelated horizon, there may be a lucrative future.