Fujitsu technology drives new simulator

Finland’s largest driver training organization, CAP-Group Oy, is the fastest growing driving school chain in the Nordic region. With 400 employees and several contracted instructors working from 90 locations throughout Finland, it recently acquired Germany’s largest driving school chain, Fahrschule Rettig Gruppe, in a deal that is expected to generate joint annual sales of €40m.

CAP-Group Oy was recently taken over by a specialist growth equity investment firm that partners with Northern European businesses to help them reach international growth. As a result, it now plans to be Europe’s leader in the driving school sector. To support pan-Europe expansion, CAP needs to stand out from the competition, and it does this by developing advanced and effective learning techniques. One of the latest is a driving simulator which students can use for five of the ten hours’ instruction normally required to pass the test.

“The simulator is a better and safer way to learn to drive and is so sophisticated that it is just like driving a real car. It is also cheaper than having cars on the road,” says Roni Pekkala, Simulator Instructor and Developer at CAP-Group Oy. “At other driving schools, simulators are used as an additional service to real driving but at CAP they are an integral and important part of the training.”

Built like a real car with all the usual controls, the simulator features three large screens which deliver a panoramic 180-degree view of the front, left, and right. Working closely with CAP, the driving simulation software was created by a specialist Finnish developer and it was important to choose suitable hardware on which to run the program. Since the simulator runs continuously, the hardware had to be robust and reliable and because it had to be portable and fit into a small compartment in the simulator it needed to have a small footprint.

CAP required powerful graphics capabilities and it was important to have good aftersales support covering the whole of Finland. For many years, CAP has used Fujitsu LIFEBOOKS in its offices. It also powered a previous simulator with Fujitsu CELSIUS workstations, but the new simulator required a hardware re-think. CAP turned to its long-time technology partner and Fujitsu re-seller, I-T Stone, which made a number of suggestions, and finally chose the FUJITSU ESPRIMO P9910 desktop

Designed for handling critical, high-end applications, the ESPRIMO was ideal because it features the NVIDIA RTX 2080 graphics card. Powered by the NVIDIA Turing™ architecture with more cores, higher clocks, and faster memory, it is a favorite with computer game players due to its performance and new levels of realism. Fujitsu’s willingness to work ‘outside the box’ on unusual projects was another plus.

CAP worked with I-T Stone and was advised by Fujitsu on set-up and installation, but a major advantage of the ESPRIMO was that it was an off-the-shelf solution that did not need customization. ESPRIMO is currently powering 50 new simulators across Finland. Approximately 20 older CELSIUS simulators are still in operation but it is planned to extend the ESPRIMO solution to all 90 sites. Looking to the future, it may also be used at the 20 locations of Fahrschule Rettig Gruppe in Germany and other European countries.

CAP students have already driven almost three million simulated kilometers. Simulated driving has saved approximately 200,000 liters of fuel and has limited carbon dioxide emissions by half a million kilograms.