High-Speed Rail Simulator

(This page still under construction...last updated 9/10/96.)

Description
Background and Completed Work
Current Work and Upgrades
Contributors
Simulator Hardware

Description

The high-speed rail simulator at the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe National Transportation Research Systems Center is a human-in-the-loop simulation of a train locomotive. Currently, the simulator consists of two 19" monitors which display the out-the-window view and dashboard display to the train engineer. A central traffic dispatcher can interact with the simulation remotely. The train engineer reacts to data and scenarios shown on the monitors by entering control commands through a traction/brake lever or the computer keyboard. The simulation software, which was developed entirely by MIT students, is portable to any SGI machine running the IRIX operating system at Rev. 3.3 or higher. The software is modular to the point that any number of trains can be running on the system at once; the number of trains is only limited by the number of available machines. See the "simulator hardware" section for a picture and more detailed information regarding the hardware.

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Background and Completed Work

The simulator was built by students in the MIT Human-Macine Systems Lab beginning in 1993. Shumei Askey studied decision aids and their effect on efficiency and safety of train operation. She investigated several different levels of information aiding that varied in complexity and found that the more complex displays (i.e., those that had the most information), while increasing "head-down" time, were prefered by the subjects and increased efficiency and safety more than the other displays investigated. (Read more about Askey's study.) Ed Lanzilotta investigated the effect of varying levels of control automation on train safety, particularly on reaction times under critical failure scenarios (e.g., cars stuck on the grade, brake/motor failures). Lanzilotta also proposed a probabilistic model of risk analysis in rail networks. (Read more about Lanzilotta's study.)

Ed Lanzilotta and Shumei Askey received their doctorates in 1995 and have since gone on to industry. The simulator is currently being maintained at the Volpe center by current HMSL master's candidates Jacob Einhorn, Helias Marinakos and Steven Villareal and Ph.D. candidate Mike Kilaras.

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