Professional virtual reality experiment tools, including driving simulators and traffic simulators,
have their strengths and weaknesses. The integration of the two simulators will
enhance the ability of both traffic modeling and driving simulation and present a new area
of applications. This paper develops, implements, and validates an experimental platform
that integrated a traffic simulator with multiple driving simulators (TSMDS). As a
connected multi-user framework that allows multiple drivers who are simultaneously
handling many driving simulators, it not only allows driver behavior experiments to be
more accurate, controlled, and versatile but also simulates special driving behavior or
multi-vehicle interactions under more realistic traffic flow environments. To validate the
performance of TSMDS, 27 drivers were recruited to attend the lane changing experiments
at a recurring on-ramp bottleneck and left-turn experiments at a two-phase signalized
intersection in Shanghai. Both experiments required several drivers to drive the TSMDS
and fulfill several complicated lane changing/crossing behaviors through their interaction.
The results show that both the participants’ response and lane changing/crossing data that
were obtained from the experiment are consistent with the field observation, which
confirms the validity of the integrated platform.