Optimal Design of a River Boat Simulator

Motion simulation platforms are mechanical devices designed to replicate the dynamics of a given vehicle. They are very attractive for training individuals such as drivers, pilots or passengers. This paper describes the dimensional synthesis of a river boat simulator that consists of a section of the boat (hull) mounted over a 3 DOF parallel robot with a passive weight compensator (3UPS + PU). Given that the dynamic performance of the robot depends strongly on its geometry, an optimization strategy was applied to find its optimal configuration. The optimization objective was to minimize the dynamic requirements of the driving actuators while accomplishing a typical simulation routine. We present the virtual work formulation of the simulator dynamics, which was previously verified with a multi-body software model. This formulation is used in an optimization methodology based on Genetic Algorithms. Different optimal configurations were found related to the set of constraints and sub-spaces of variables considered by the optimization formulation.