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A large share of automotive innovations consists of significant improvements in formerly pure mechanical systems which are made possible using integrated electronics together with complex information processing. Such mechatronic systems require a concurrent design of mechanical, electronical, and information processing sub-systems in order to reach the cost requirements of the automotive industry. The motivation for the use of mechatronics is discussed, as well as the most important technological challenges of the mechatronical approach. Mechatronical solutions for different automotive applications are presented. The driving factors for future development of mechatronics in the automotive sector are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objective: To lay the basis of studying autonomous driving comfort using driving simulators, we assessed the behavioral validity of two moving-base simulator configurations by contrasting them with a test-track setting.Background: With increasing level of automation, driving comfort becomes increasingly important. Simulators provide a safe environment to study perceived comfort in autonomous driving. To date, however, no studies were conducted in relation to comfort in autonomous driving to determine the extent to which results from simulator studies can be transferred to on-road driving conditions.Method: Participants ( N = 72) experienced six differently parameterized lane-change and deceleration maneuvers and subsequently rated the comfort of each scenario. One group of participants experienced the maneuvers on a test-track setting, whereas two other groups experienced them in one of two moving-base simulator configurations.Results: We could demonstrate relative and absolute validity for one of the two simulator configurations. Subsequent analyses revealed that the validity of the simulator highly depends on the parameterization of the motion system.Conclusion: Moving-base simulation can be a useful research tool to study driving comfort in autonomous vehicles. However, our results point at a preference for subunity scaling factors for both lateral and longitudinal motion cues, which might be explained by an underestimation of speed in virtual environments.Application: In line with previous studies, we recommend lateral- and longitudinal-motion scaling factors of approximately 50% to 60% in order to obtain valid results for both active and passive driving tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Next generation automotive hardware and user interfaces are increasingly pre-tested in driving simulators. What are the potential limitations of such simulations? We determined the relative and absolute validity of five different driving simulators at the Daimler AG by evaluating five functions of an in-vehicle system based on the guideline of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (2006). The simulations were compared to on-road driving. We hypothesized that not only simulator characteristics, but also user characteristics, such as simulator sickness, gender, or age, influence behavioral validity. Even though relating simulator characteristics and user characteristics to driving performance across different driving simulators and driving tasks is difficult, our results are surprisingly in line with the current body of research. We demonstrate the usefulness of all simulators on a relative and partially on an absolute level with moving-base simulators being preferable to fixed-base simulators. As hypothesized, we showed that simulator sickness was significantly associated with impaired performance. In the fixed-base simulators, we found a significant interaction between age and gender, which we could not find in moving-base simulators and in the on-road study. Explanations for our findings and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]