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XPI awarded five-year £20m contract by General Dynamics UK for SCOUT SV driver simulators

XPI will provide 28 high-fidelity complex driver simulators – a mixture of static and full-motion simulators – for training drivers on all six variants of SCOUT SV. The programme will be the first of its kind in the UK; use of the ‘six degrees of freedom’ simulator has not previously been used within the British Army Land environment.

The ability to develop better driver awareness and familiarity with tracked AFVs is vitally important due to the increasingly complex nature of the vehicles. Simulation will help to develop future generations of SCOUT SV drivers, while allowing for quantitative evaluation of driver aptitude and ensuring that live training in the vehicle is of maximum value.

The UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) in 2010 set a target of completing 50% of all training using simulation by 2020 – with the aim of reducing vehicle costs, reducing environmental impact and saving fuel. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) recently produced a ground-breaking study which showed that driver training with a high-fidelity simulator was as effective as training with a real vehicle.

Simon Skinner, Managing Director of XPI Simulation, said:

“This significant contract for XPI Simulation confirms our position as the pre-eminent supplier of driver training simulators in the UK in both the military and civilian domains. Combining XPI’s flexibility and agility with the financial strength and in-depth expertise of Thales provides our customer and the MoD end-user with a professionally delivered innovative solution.”

Peter Hitchcock, Vice President of Avionics at Thales UK, says: “This contract signifies an important step for XPI and Thales as we continue to deliver on our ambitions within the military land training and simulation market. We look forward to working with General Dynamics UK and providing the British Army with a best-in-class training capability for the SCOUT SV.” 

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Note to Editors
• SCOUT SV represents the future of AFVs for the British Army, providing best-in-class protection, survivability, reliability, mobility and all-weather intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and recognition (ISTAR) capabilities.
• The six variants of SCOUT SV are: Scout Reconnaissance, Protected Mobility Reconnaissance Support (PMRS), Command and Control, Engineering Reconnaissance, Repair, and Recovery.
• Dstl’s research – the Training Experimentation Simulator Systems (Land) programme, or TESSL – was devised to discover whether simulation can be used to train handling and control skills for tracked vehicles, whether it is more appropriate for certain types of skills or tasks than others, and to what extent the method of training affects the motivation, engagement and confidence of trainees.
• For TESSL, Dstl designed a controlled experiment to compare live and simulator-based training effectiveness; while the industry team led by XPI Simulation supplied the research simulator and technical capability.​
About XPI Simulation
XPI Simulation is a pioneer in using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions to build and deliver high-fidelity simulated environments. The company specialises in innovative techniques for processing LIDAR data, a technology which maps physical environments in ultra-fine detail using a range of light frequencies, and ray tracing, which generates highly-realistic images by tracing the path of light and simulating its interaction with virtual objects.
XPI designs and manufactures a range of simulator-based driver training systems – from desktop solutions to full-scale converted vehicles – for customers that include the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD), British police forces, advanced driver training providers, Transport for London’s road safety programmes, and Formula 1™ teams.
In November 2013, XPI Simulation Ltd. was acquired by Thales Group. http://www.xpisimulation.com/