Abstract
The interactive bicycle simulator presented in this paper consists of a Stewart platform manipulator, magneto-rheological steering and braking devices, and a visual simulator. To provide a rider with reality, these devices should be controlled in real-time and motions of the devices and the visual should be also synchronized. If any of the devices and the visual gets unsynchronized due to significant blocking of control signals, the reality of the simulator is no longer secured. This paper presents communication protocols that minimize the blocked time of the control processes to guarantee the synchronization. The protocols are designed based on IPC (InterProcess Communications) of QNX, TCP/IP, and serial communication. The performance of the designed communication protocols is evaluated with the implemented bicycle simulator, and found satisfactory.
