The main aim of this project was to develop virtual representations of real roads for use in driving simulators. This was done in order to enable assessments of new systems on existing and well known roads in a driving simulator. This will increase the external validity of virtual testing. Furthermore, the usage of the virtual model of such roads makes the simulator results better comparable to earlier performed or later following road tests.

In order to ease the overall creation of virtual models of real roads as exactly as possible, and to enable the use of existing map data, there was a need to develop effective and efficient tools that can generate virtual road models more or less automatically from various data sources.

The roads connecting Göteborg-Borås-Alingsås-Göteborg were selected. The purpose for this is due to their proximity to the vehicle industry in west Sweden and to the test tracks “Hällered” and “AstaZero”. However, the tools and methods developed can be used to build a virtual representation of any other road.

The project was carried out in steps, starting with data collection (investigation and assessment of available data) followed by data treatment (remove irrelevant data and errors, filtering, etc.), modelling (mathematical description of road properties) and simulation (selection of data formats for real time simulation).

The description of the roadway through a landscape was broken into three main geometric parts: alignment (the route of the road in two-dimensional plane, described by clothoid splines), height profile (described by cubic splines) and cross-section (crossfall and banking, described by cubic splines).