Racing has always been a very expensive sport, with costs exceeding $3M for a person to race a single season. Thus, racing simulators are important for athletes to train and experiment during times they cannot field a car. This significantly lowers the barrier to entry for the sport, allowing some hobbyists to enjoy racing simulators as well. However, even lower end commercial systems cost upwards of $300, which still prices out many people who may be interested in motorsport. Our objective was to construct a low-cost but high-fidelity wheel and pedal interface that is compatible with multiple racing simulator software. This was achieved by removing luxury features while focusing on performance. Specifically, we focused on the following metrics: achieving a 360° range of motion for the steering wheel, steering precision of 1° or lower, 100% pedal utilization for the throttle and brake, implementation of sufficient buttons that enable navigating all menus and shifting through all gears and lastly, restricting the response time for the overall system to 20 milliseconds (ms) or below. The design comprised both electrical and mechanical components. The electrical system features twelve buttons for shifting gears and menu navigation, two potentiometers for accelerating and braking, and an absolute magnetic encoder to capture rotational data. The mechanical components included a custom wheel for turning and two foot pedals.
Users can plug the device into a Windows PC via USB cable, and the device will be registered by the computer as a controller. Physical inputs on the device are then converted into outputs in various simulator software such as Forza Horizon and Assetto Corsa. A user will press and depress foot pedals, steer the wheel, and press buttons to emulate the feeling of driving a real car. Our final tests indicate that we achieved full menu navigation and gear shifting, a steering precision of 0.65°, all sub-systems except one providing a response time of less than 20 ms and a total cost of less than $119. These were the specifications that were fully met. In contrast, we achieved a 260° steering range of motion for steering, 85.5% throttle utilization and 84.3% brake utilization. As part of the future work, we plan to do the following: improve the steering range and throttle utilization metrics by refining the design, incorporate a force feedback system using motors and design an independent power supply for supporting the force feedback.