What is CUSP?
The Carleton University Simulator Project (CUSP) was introduced in the 2002/2003 academic year as a new innovative capstone project with the aim to expose students to the latest in simulator technology. The CUSP group is lead by a multi-disciplinary team of Lead Engineers, and is composed of roughly 25 students from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering.

There are three different subgroups within the CUSP project. The first is the Several Integrated Degree-of-Freedom Demonstrator (SIDFreD) whose purpose is to expose students to hands on simulator design and construction. The second part of the project, dubbed Atlas, is a novel simulator concept granting a wider range of motion over the current available motion platforms. A prototype for Atlas, called Atlas Lite, was constructed during the 2005/2006 academic year and is currently at version 2.1.  The third and final part of the CUSP project is the in-house car simulator software that is being developed to drive the simulator platforms.

The Carleton University Simulator Project has now entered the 2009/2010 academic year. Work is underway on augmenting the AtlasLite and AtlasTDP control systems, refining and completing the AtlasTDP sphere and support structure, and fully benchmarking and evaluating SIDFreD's performance.