Design and evaluation of a virtual gearshift application

When a customer buys a new car, he or she wants it to address personal preferences with respect to its driving behavior. By utilizing virtual reality technology, a virtual prototyping environment (VPE) can be created in which the behavior of a vehicle or part of a vehicle can be evaluated and adjusted to match the driver\´s desires. This paper describes the design and the evaluation of a VPE for manually operated gearboxes. The test group considered the simulated "virtual" gearshift feel to be quite similar to the "real" gearshift feel of a test vehicle. By further developing this VPE, it should become possible to define gearshift feel by customer assessment through haptic simulation, after which the physical gearbox is designed in such a way that it matches the preferred shifting behavior.