Similar to flight or car simulators, bicycling simulators are an ideal tool for low-risk research, training and communicating visions of the future. However, developers and users of bicycling simulators and their knowledge have so far been isolated from each other and mostly limited to the research sector. Practical applications of cycling simulators are still few and far between.
The OpenBikeSim research project will create an online portal that will provide bicycle simulator knowledge and technology as an open source toolkit and build a community of developers and users with the aim of transferring bicycle simulators into practical applications.
In addition to the selection of the technology with which the bicycling simulator is realised, the design of the experiment has a major influence on the quality and significance of a study. Elements such as the process of the experiment, the dependent and independent variables, the scenario and many others must be planned and their influence on the validity of the results considered. In order to provide support for the development of new studies, data was extracted and collected from publications on previous simulator studies. In the thesis, this data will be analysed and compared with basic theory on experimental design in simulator studies in order to derive recommendations.

• Which fundamental elements of the experimental design can be identified in previous studies with bicycling simulators and to what extent were they present?

• Fundamental research