Hi Ecebloggers,

Around 2 weeks ago, I completed my summer internship at UNH. During a roughly two month timespan, I worked on how interacting with a keyboard and an attached display in the vehicle might effect the driver performance. At certain fixed locations, a text appeared on the screen for a few seconds and the subject was required to type that text using the keyboard. However, to make the study interesting, some events were designed that would be evoked when the subject would be diverted looking at the keyboard. One of the five designed events, which I call “A barrel falling from a truck”, was quite interesting. The name of the event itself indicates what actually happens during the event. A barrel from a moving truck would fall just short of the subject when he came close to the truck driving in the same lane. Here is a video that demonstrates the incident as it occurs in the Project54 driving simulator.

It was actually a little arduous to make a falling barrel look realistic as such a support is not provided in Hyperdrive , the software used for designing the scenarios. A barrel, as the ecebloggers might know, is a static entity. It was not possible to keep it in motion with the truck, a kinematic entity. I tried to create a barrel with dynamic properties and then relocate it along the roadway at a certain height above it. However, while Hyperdrive relocated the barrel along the roadway, the barrel could not be placed above the level of the roadway. A bug was noticed in Hyperdrive when the log files created indicated that the barrel was moved above the roadway level as well when actually it didn’t happen. I contacted Hyperdrive forums support and they clarified that all the kinematic and dynamic entities in the scenario were so designed to stay adhered to the roadway and such a displacement above the road was not possible for the barrel during the simulation.

To overcome this problem, I estimated the possible positions of the barrel, assuming it was in motion with the truck, and placed the barrels in midair at those specific coordinates. A script was then created to implement the planned scene. Initially, all the barrels placed in midair were made invisible and as the script progressed, the barrels were made to switch between visible and invisible states in a consecutive fashion to achieve synchronisation with the motion of the truck. Finally, when the subject came within a suitable distance relative to the truck, a separate set of barrels set for a projectile-like motion was triggered in the same visible and invisible fashion to achieve an appropriate declivity. Since the barrels that were pre-placed were limited and not certain,  the desired effect might not be obtained in case the number of barrels in midair reduced to zero when a subject approached the truck too slowly or he went on to a different lane. Thus, the person had to stay in that lane for achieving the desired effect, which otherwise, is quite a cool event to watch and enjoy.

Puneet Lakhanpal

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