Roller Coaster Tycoon Booth - 4D Roller Coaster Simulator

In Spring 2024, CMU TPEG participated in the Spring Carnival tradition of Booth for the first time, in collaboration with CMU's American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) chapter. For this, we built a small structure themed to the classic video game Roller Coaster Tycoon. At the centerpiece of this experience was a game where guests would build and ride their own roller coaster on a 4D simulator.

Working closely with David Purta of the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center, I lead the design and construction of the motion platform used for this experience. The system works by using solenoid valves to control the airflow from an air compressor into and out of air bellows to raise and lower the corners of the platform. These bellows were arranged in a triangle shape, allowing us to achieve uphill, downhill, and banked left and right turning motions.

To control this motion, we used a relay board to switch the valves open and closed. After testing to determine the time it would take to inflate and deflate each bellow to achieve the desired motions, I wrote a C# script to communicate with the relay board over USB serial and trigger the sequence of valve openings. This was then integrated into a Unity project responsible for controlling the game, which synchronized the ride's motion with the video video.

The valves are controlled by a relay board, which a computer can connect to over serial. This allowed us to integrate the platform into a Unity project to sync the motion of the platform to the ride video.

Project Team
Matthew Saenz - Motion Platform Development Lead
Alva Huang - Mechanical Engineer, Motion Platform Design
Jovanni Acosta - Mechanical Engineer, Motion Platform Design
Angie Mendenhall - Unity Game Development Lead
Taylor Roberts - Computer Science, Game Development
Anaya Bhammar - Ride Vehicle Design Lead
Namky Eun Llovet - Mechanical Engineer, Ride Vehicle Design