What is your project about?

This project is about designing and building a fully functional, compact, and affordable 6-Degrees-of-Freedom (6DOF) Motion Simulator. Using a Stewart Platform design, it can accurately replicate motion in all six directions: surge (forward/backward), sway (left/right), heave (up/down), pitch (tilting forward/backward), roll (tilting side to side), and yaw (turning left/right). It's perfect for immersive racing and flight simulation experiences.

Introduction

Motion simulators are the ultimate tool for immersion in sim-racing and flight simulation, but commercial solutions are often prohibitively expensive and large. This project aims to democratize that experience by providing a complete guide to building your own 6DOF platform using readily available components like Arduino, AC servos, and a custom-designed Stewart Platform. I focus on a compact design that is powerful enough for a realistic experience while being accessible to makers and enthusiasts.

How it works:

Based on game simulation, a platforms movement in space is visualized. Tilt, roll, surge, etc. The ESP32 is supposed to use inverse kinematics to determine how far and in what direction each motor needs to move orient the platform in a given configuration. The servo's are configured in what called a rotary stewart design, which translates rotational movement into linear movement.

On the PC side of things:

- You will need to install SimTools and configure your axis to output the correct values for your platform, not doing so can result in your platform failing. You must also enter the platform geometry into the Arduino code "helpers". The arduino code was developed by Knaufinator on XSimulator.

Prototype Testing Video: https://vimeo.com/1078172912?share=copy