MOTUM Simulation

In-depth

25 Jun

Virtual Reality and Learning to Drive.

Recently I was invited to experience MOTUM Simulation, an Australian company at the forefront of virtual reality driver learning aids and also the launch of MOTUM World, the company’s leading-edge software package which can be tailored to any form of driving training from cars to trucks.

If you’ve been to the Brisbane Truck Show, there’s a fair chance that you will have seen their products, and a queue of (mostly younger) people lined up to try their VR racing car.

While this is a lot of fun, MOTUM’s charter is not to be an amusement park ride, but rather the much more serious business of making people better drivers behind the wheel.

Steve Hoinville founded MOTUM Simulation in 2016 with the aim of bringing premium quality motion simulation to the broader driver training industry by removing the traditional barriers to market.

The salient word here is ‘motion’. We can all sit in front of our PC and ‘drive’ an F1 car around the track of our choice, but it’s hardly real world. Try sitting in (in this case) a race car and pop on a virtual reality headset and suddenly you’re immersed in this virtual world no matter which way you ‘look’.

Next choose the world you want to be in: The Monash Freeway for instance. Light or heavy traffic. Day or night. Fine or stormy weather.

Now, have a machine that that responds to every input you make on the wheel, gear change, accelerator and brake. Hit a pothole and know that you have. A car cuts you off and you have to brake hard. Practice on avoiding it and know what it feels like – how your vehicle will respond in this or any other given situation.

Simulators have been around for decades, most notably in the aviation sector. Would-be pilots don’t do a three day course at ‘Acrobatic Flying School’ and jump behind the stick of a Boeing 777. Yet you can go out and get a Heavy Rigid. HC or MC licence in three days or less.

When I got my first truck licence, my examiner very said to me, “OK you’re licenced. Now get out there and learn how to drive a truck!”

It was sensible advice, but not exactly ideal when you jump in something with 20, 30, 40 or more tons behind the cab the next day.

“We put our kids behind the wheel of the family car for 120 hours, sit beside them and ‘teach’ them how to drive – including all our own bad habits,” said Glenn Ridge, who is a close friend and avid supporter of Steve Hoinville. “I’ve never quite understood why our education system has never looked seriously at educating kids how to drive. I’ve been to lots of schools and spoken to people in the education system and said, why can’t we integrate this into the curriculum somehow?

“Often the answer has been, we don’t have time to fit it into the curriculum. We went to some corporations asking for support to get this into schools and hit a brick wall. Some accept simulation as viable and others don’t – regarding it as ‘just a game’. I’m sure that airlines don’t regard their simulators as a game.”

Have a look at the video below to get an idea of MOTUM in motion….

MOTUM’s launch was held at Bosch headquarters in Melbourne. Whilst Bosch is not financially involved in MOTUM, President of Bosch Australia, Gavin Smith has known Steve Hoinville for some ten years and believes wholeheartedly in his mission to educate would-be drivers – from schoolchildren to those who would get behind the wheel of a truck.

MOTUM’s goals also fit with the Bosch ethos of ‘Invent It For Life’.

“Notably, Bosch is the world’s largest automotive systems and components company,” said Gavin. “We are literally in every vehicle ever made since 1886. We operate the world’s largest independent car service network. We know a lot about cars and what makes them inherently unsafe.

“In our mobility business we have been bringing innovations that have made vehicles cleaner, greener, more fun to drive and safer for 138 years. The name Bosch is synonymous with ABS, traction control, stability control, airbag and other electronics as well as an increasing array of advanced driver assistance systems.

“Recently our engineers here in Australia bought a new innovation to market – trailer safety control which brings ABS and stability control to caravans and other tow vehicles just as we find it now in cars.

“Bosch’s contribution to making vehicle safer is second to none, so listen to me when I say that technology on its own isn’t enough. Technology cannot prevent every crash because you cannot change the laws of physics. Cars will crash despite our best endeavours to use technology to avoid that.

“So we need to improve the skills - we need to have safer drivers. And we believe the best way to safely build and complement on road skills is not through on-road driving error but through realistic simulation.

“There’s an old saying that you have to makes mistakes to learn. I’m not sure in this day and age that I would want anyone, much less my two teenage daughters to learn by making mistakes in their cars on public roads where the consequences can be life changing, even life ending.”

**Steve Hoinville, Gavin Smith (Bosch) and Glen Ridge**

Steve Hoinville founded MOTUM Simulation in 2016 with the aim to bring premium quality motion simulation to the broader driver- training industry by removing the traditional barriers to market.

“I’m sure that you’re all familiar with simulation being used for the past half-century in the aviation industry for pilot training,” said Steve. “It is also used in defence applications, with members of the Defence Force trained in the use of armoured vehicles - for example the Bushmaster. There are also plenty of applications in the upper echelon of motorsport, particularly Formula One, where they develop techniques and the skills in preparing for a race. It has delivered excellent, robust and risk free training outcomes for those industries.

“Traditionally the hardware utilised for these applications is horrendously expensive, being complex to operate and maintain, and often requiring engineers or technicians to run it. They are permanent facilities usually requiring industrial power like three-phase electricity or industrial hydraulics and they are almost exclusively single purpose. You cannot convert a Formula One simulator into something else.

“Racing games have their rightful place in the man cave and they can certainly be used for basic procedural training, but they are not immersive enough to develop skills and behaviours that are transferable to the real world.”

“In the early years we were successful in developing hardware technology with the focus on industries such as motor racing and defence. There were two reasons for that: motor racing was already one of those industries that had adopted simulation and we’ve had a few Supercar teams use our technology.

“With True Motion Technology, as we have coined it, we have retained the simulation industry’s gold standard (of the hardware) in relation to the movement of the equipment in every direction, but we’ve removed the barriers to market.

“Our units are simple to operate and I could teach anyone to use the MOTUM Simulator in about 15 minutes. We are also completely adaptable. Road car, racing car, truck or aircraft - we can quickly adapt from one site to another. The system runs on 10 amp power so it can be plugged in anywhere, and is set up and operational in 20-25 minutes. Importantly, if you compare this technology to similar performing systems, the price of acquisition is around 20 to 25% of our competitors.”

**QUBE is using the system to train their drivers**

MOTUM Simulation is a 100% Australian owned company with all IP and R&D conducted in house. The company has patents in 14 global regions and units in operation in five countries, mainly in motorsport plus a little bit of entertainment as well as some defence, research and corporate applications. Currently there are some limited specialist driver education applications as well.

Along with the hardware which is well proven, the future also lies in the release of MOTUM World software.

Steve Hoinville: “Our vision is that we should be utilising this technology to produce safer drivers, and hence a safe driving community on our roads. Something that benefits the airline industry and pilot training should be equally shared with learner-drivers or for that matter any of our drivers, if the technology was freely available and accessible to the industry as reasonable cost.

“It is time to embrace new technologies such as our products, our hardware and more importantly our software, to help curb road trauma. Our aim is to develop skills, behaviours and decision-making which can transfer from the virtual to the real world.

“To achieve this, here some of the features that simulation must have. It has to have accurate physics in the way the machinery operates and feels like the real thing in 3 dimensions. It must feel like a car, ambulance or truck. The scenarios must replicate real life by which I mean that you can drive down the Monash Freeway, if that’s where your work takes you, or Chapel Street in Melbourne. It must replicate real life such as night driving, rain, potholes or roadwork’s. It must replicate light or heavy traffic flows. It must be able to throw unexpected hazards in your path as happens in real life. This is what our software can do.”

“There are in fact a dozen or so software titles round that purport to deliver this level of driver training. None have these features. We found one out of the US and Europe who came close but were incredibly complex to operate. They were really aimed at OE manufacturers to develop their cars. They have the capability to train people but they are almost as expensive per annum as it is to buy a simulator from us with full-life software. Also, none of the software titles available were fit for purpose for comprehensive transferable driver training that was relatively simple to operate for the trainer.

“MOTUM World is a fully expandable, flexible and tailorable, synthetic training environment applicable to any land-based vehicle training regime. We have the ability to generate specific land scapes of the real world, for example Centre Road, South-Eastern Freeway, Flinders Street or anywhere else, and seamlessly integrate them with synthetic designed roads that have features specifically designed to teach skills and behaviours that the learner-driver, community driver or education committee will need. The seamless integration allows us to continually expand MOTUM World.”

“Our advanced AI capability allows different behaviours between cars and members of the traffic network from expected - how you’re likely to drive, to the unexpected - how to manage non-scripted driving events that are randomly generated. This means that if you come to the same point in the environment five minutes later, you will not see the same red car turn in front of you. There will be something entirely different and you will have to react to the situation that presents itself.

“We have the option for the instructor to trigger events at any time so if they want to inject something into the scenario like a car running a red light of speeding they can do that at a time and place of their choice will in the lesson.

“We can have no traffic or dense traffic. We can have safe braking distance indicators in the form of a bright red ball which references which is where you need to stop. We can make it dynamic so it increases as the speed increases. We have pop-up warnings for infringements. We can tailor anything in any application and environment.

“We have the ability to hold the session and review and critique and discuss the decision that the driver has just made and why they made it. And also of course to look at the results. MOTUM World can be used for any driving scenario, any demographic, any vehicle type, any road type and any training program.”

An important point made by Steve Hoinville was that there is no co-dependence between MOTUM World (the software) and the hardware.

“To date, the three industry applications we have undertaken has been an end-to-end system where MOTUM World is seamlessly integrated into the True Motion hardware, but that is not necessarily going to be the place for all applications.

“There are plenty of potential training applications which we would call part-task or a procedural track. This means we can start training school students two or three years before they are going to get their ‘L’ plates. We can teach them about hazard perception, traffic anticipation, how big is that gap? What is my braking distance? It can be done in simple desktop training providing sophisticated software to deliver those scenarios and the results.

“So this pragmatic approach of either applying either or both technologies for any particular scenario and requirement maximises our opportunity to get into market, and maximises the opportunity to create and train safer driving techniques to a much larger percentage of our driving population.

“To achieve we will be launching a pilot program of about 10 simulators in the hands of end users and we are partnering with some pretty impressive brands in Australian industry. Firstly the Australian Driving Institute and Armstrong Driver Education will incorporate MOTUM World and our hardware as they see fit, into their driver training programs. We have two high schools - St Joseph’s and Melbourne Bay College in Geelong - where we will be bringing our technology into an optional part of their curriculum for year 9 to 12 students.

“These institutions adopting our technology will give us valuable feedback in terms of modifying, tailoring and expanding our systems moving forward. There is an important reason why we’re doing this. We like to think we are pretty good at making simulation technology – both hardware and software, but we’re not driver trainers so collaboration with these business will benefit all involved.

“We believe we are a great starting point but we need industry collaboration to take it to the next step. Three universities - Charles Darwin, Federation and RMIT will also be involved in this program. They will independently assess the results and veracity of bringing MOTUM World into these driver education scenarios. They are very excited to join us on this journey for their own reasons, but for us we hope that within not too many years, a part of driver training is done in simulation.”

**The equipment can be tailored to any type of driving experience**

“It is important to point out that simulation will never replace real-world situations, but would augment it. So instead of 120 hours driving up and down the same streets with the same parent teaching you, driving students may get 110 hours in the car and 30 hours in a simulated road experience with different weather conditions, road conditions, and narrow, single lane country roads, whatever it may be. To get to that level we need evidence-based results that are independently assessed and that’s where we have these key players and industry players who we are excited to have on board as they are critical to our continued development.”

MOTUM has applied for Government funding and is looking for investment from the private sector to grow at a faster rate and further enhance its technology. I hope they get it! There are 2861 Secondary Schools in Australia with 1.5 million 16 – 19 year olds. Eighty percent of our kids get a license before they turn 20, so you can imagine how many would benefit in the next 12 months alone from MOTUM World.

For those unable to afford the hardware – some schools for example – Steve envisages a setup entailing a basic Logitech steering wheel and pedals.

“If you bring it back to keyboard and joystick control, of course it’s not going to give you what you ideally need, but you don’t need the full environment to teach a 15 year old to come to an intersection and determine whether the gap to that oncoming car is big enough to safely make a turn. So there will be varying levels of access to our programs. That is why it is so important that our software is independent of the hardware. We envisage that within a couple of years’ time, for every one piece of hardware, we might have 10 or 20 software titles out there as desktop trainers.”

Can the hardware and software be applied to truck driver training?

“Definitely,” replies Steve Hoinville. “The steering wheel can go from vertical to horizontal to simulate a forklift or a truck. The seats click in and out. We create all the main controls ourselves so if you want an 18 speed Road Ranger or an Automatic, we could do it.”

Ships transporting cars have them parked within a couple of centimetres of each other so I put on the VR headset and tried driving cars on and off one. I failed miserably but got much better with practice, which is why MOTUM have a couple of stevedoring companies on board and why those companies are enthusiastic supporters of MOTUM.

It is easy to see how MOTUM Hardware and Software could be applied to the trucking industry. Indeed, having tried their systems, I would regard it as vital.