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Unread 17-07-2003, 00:42
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dlavery dlavery is offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by M. Krass
Most of Test Track's problems stemmed from 'block violations.' That is, the computers had trouble maintaining the proper separation between the cars to ensure that ride could operate safely. This was a unique problem to Test Track because of the nature of the attraction. There are 27 cars cycling through, but at any given time, some of them are stopped and others are traveling at 65 mph and still others are doing something in between.

Mission: Space's pods, on the other, need only spin around in a big giant circle or otherwise rotate on, to my knowledge, a single other axis. It may be two axes, though. It's not easy, I'm sure, but it does seem less complex than Test Track.
I understand the nature of the problems that Test Track faced (as one of the Disney ride engineers characterized it when we talked in 1999, it was the "2 cars in Kansas conundrum - one car at a time works fine, but two cars at a time are guaranteed to collide!"). It is basically a big, grown-up version of the "railroad signaling system" controls problem that sophomore Computer Science students used to solve. But what I don't know are the details of the specific implementation (vs. the general algorithmic approach) that Disney used to cure the 45-mph collisions they were experiencing at one time.

Don't confuse the complexity of the supporting software system with the complexity of the kinematics of the ride pods/cars. The cars on Test Track basically have just one degree of freedom each - their position along the track (with the free variable being their acceleration along the path at any moment in time). Their path in 3-space is completely pre-defined and physically restricted. The pods in Mission: Space have three degrees of freedom each (the centrifuge rotation plus 2 minor axes of motion). At the highest level, their path is pre-defined (i.e. a really big circle). But at the detailed level, the position and minor axis orientation along that circular path is variable, based on the outputs of the control system.

The complexity comes in when you start adding multiple units to the system, and fully load the rides with passengers. At full load, 27 cars on the track gives 27 total degrees of freedom that have to be controlled by the Test Track software. For Mission: Space, 4 centrifuges with 1 controlled motion (rotation) and 10 pods/centrifuge with 2 controlled motions/pod gives 84 degrees of freedom that have to be simultaneously controlled. Control of any one individual motion on either ride may be a relatively simple matter, but handling the large number of simultaneous operations (and their potential for interaction), is the hard part.

This is an over-simplification (for example, the Test Track cars have independent control inputs for brakes, acceleration, etc., and there are lots of controlled motions in Mission: Space associated with safety systems that aren't mentioned here), but you get the idea.

-dave
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