Frank Drop Email & Phone Number

The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Cruden is the world’s leading designer, manufacturer and integrator of open architecture driving simulators for the automotive, motorsport and marine industries. Each simulator is unique: a simulator typically consists of several standard components (developed in-house) and a multitude of third-party software and hardware components. As Software Development Manager, I manage a group of experienced software engineers working on a broad variety of simulator related software products. These range from very high-performance applications performing many difficult mathematical operations to user-friendly editors for content developers, and from low-level communication SDKs to software integrations with third-party products.

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

Cruden is the world’s leading designer, manufacturer and integrator of open architecture driving simulators for the automotive, motorsport and marine industries. Each simulator is unique: a simulator typically consists of several standard components (developed in-house) and a multitude of third-party software and hardware components. As a project engineer, my main tasks are to integrate these third-party components into the simulator and fine-tune the simulator for the specific use-cases of the customer.

Tübingen Area, Germany

Predictive cueing is a high-tech startup developing next-generation "Motion Cueing Algorithms" for human-in-the-loop simulators.Human-in-the-loop simulators allow humans to drive a virtual vehicle through a virtual world long before the conceptual vehicle is physically built, enabling safe and cost efficient development of novel systems. The human should experience realistic visual and physical motion cues to feel completely immersed in the simulation. Currently, the realism of the physical motion cues is low, especially in driving simulators. The lack of realism often leads to simulator motion sickness: it is no exception that up to 50% of all simulator runs in a single experiment are aborted due to sickness, constituting a large waste of time and money.The physical motion of a simulator cannot be identical to the physical motion of the virtual vehicle, because the simulator can move only a few meters, while the virtual vehicle moves many kilometers through the virtual world. The transformation of the vehicle motion into simulator motion is done by a “Motion Cueing Algorithm”. Our technology, a “Model Predictive” motion cueing algorithm, entails a big step forward in the realism of simulator physical motion cues. The essential elements of our technology are: 1) a highly accurate model of the simulator including its physical limitations and 2) a prediction of the future actions of the human inside the simulator using artificial intelligence. Based on the prediction of future events, our algorithm calculates the best possible simulator motion that just fits within its physical limits; improving realism and reducing motion sickness.

Tübingen Area, Germany

As a research scientist at MPI, I work on novel Motion Cueing Algorithms for motion simulators that are used for pilot and driver training and research in the automotive and aerospace industry. The goal of a Motion Cueing Algorithm is to compute a motion trajectory for the simulator that will give the human inside the simulator a realistic feeling of the simulated car or aircraft motion. The novel Cueing Algorithms make use of Model Predictive Control (MPC), which allows for a much more efficient use of the simulator workspace. The MPC controller becomes especially efficient if an accurate prediction of the future actions of the human is available. I develop methods that provide these predictions of the human actions, making use of machine learning methods.

Tübingen Area, Germany

The title of my PhD thesis, describing the research work performed at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, Germany, in collaboration with the Technical University Delft, the Netherlands, is "Control-Theoretic Models of Feedforward in Manual Control".Keywords: Human-machine interaction, Modelling, Machine Learning, System Identification, Control-theory, Feedforward, Human-in-the-loop Motion Simulators, Automation.Motivation and research question: Automation enables us to design a wide variety of support systems for the human while in control of a vehicle, such as a car, bicycle or airplane. To design these vehicles and their support systems properly, it is important to understand how a human controls a vehicle. During my PhD research I answered the question "How does a human control a vehicle?" by performing experiments in simulators to collect big amounts of data, and using System Identification techniques to build models of human behavior.Main contribution: The main success of my research work was the identification of "feedforward" from data collected from a human-in-the-loop experiment, which was considered to be difficult and had not been done before.To control a vehicle, a human can use three sources of information.First, information is perceived through the visual and vestibular senses. The human can respond to this information in a "feedback" fashion.Second, the human has learned an internal model of the vehicle and the outside world.Third, the human can make predictions of what will happen in the future.The second and third sources of information can be used in a "feedforward" fashion. Even though this feedforward was frequently described in literature, it was never identified from experimental data.

Soesterberg

Full-time work as software and real-time controller developer. Programmed several applications for use in the DESDEMONA centrifugal motion simulator. The first application was a software replica of a glass cockpit and the second a control loaded yoke for the simulation of a large airliner.

Internship at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics as undergraduate student in the group `Human Perception, Cognition and Action’. I performed research in the field of human manual control modeling titled `Modeling of roll-lateral side-steps, The feasibility of a PID based pilot model’. The project duration was six months in which I defined the project goal, performed literature research, designed, set-up and performed a human-in-the-loop experiment and summarized the analysis in a written report.

Delft Area, Netherlands

Formula Student is an international Engineering Design competition, in which student teams design, build and operate a single seat formula racecar. The Technical Manager function focuses on both resource management (managing a diverse team of 50 engineers and scarce financial resources) and technical product management (the formula car itself).

M.Sc., Human Machine Interaction In Aerospace

Education record

B.Sc., Aerospace Engineering

Activities and Societies: DUT Racing Formula Student

Education record