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Using Matlab for Racer car behavior analysis.

INTRODUCTION

RTD is a binary logging format used by Racer as the native telemetry format. The binary format itself is described here, but Racer comes with a utility named RTD2ASCII which can be used to convert RTD files directly to ASCII from the command prompt.

DOWNLOAD

RTD2ASCII comes with any Racer installation starting from Racer v0.9.0RC6. The file in question is rtd2ascii.exe.

USAGE

The steps in using this tool are as follows:

• Drive around in Racer, creating a log file as you go.
• Convert the generated log file into ASCII format using the rtd2ascii tool.
• Analyze the logged data.

The steps are explained in more detail below.

LOG FILE GENERATION

The racer.ini file in your installation directory contains a 'log' section. Here you can select which groups of information you want to save (log.groups.*) and the filename that is used when saving (the file will end up in data/dump). You can enable it from the start with log.enable=1, but you can also do this on the fly while driving by pressing F3 (note that Shift-F3 turns loggin off again). For more detailed information on how to log, see the logging reference.

Make sure you set log.type to 2 (RTD) to generate an RTD file.

CONVERTING TO MATLAB

Open a command prompt, go to the Racer directory (i.e. 'cd c:\sims\racer\data\dump'), then enter:

rtd2ascii data/dump/<mylogfile>.rtd <mylogfile>.txt

Where you change <mylogfile> to the file generated in data/dump.

SEE ALSO

The inverse operation (ASCII to RTD) is not possible.

(last updated February 27, 2013 )