A computer-aided ergonomic assessment and product design system using digital hands

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to develop a system for computer-aided ergonomic assessment of products without real subjects and physical mockups by integrating a digital hand model with a product model. In previous work, we developed functions of a semi-automatic grasp planning for the digital hand and of quantitatively evaluating the grasp stability of the product based on the force-closure and the grasp quality in our system. We also confirmed the validity of the results of these functions by comparing them with the real grasp postures. In this paper, we propose a new function of evaluating "ease of grasping (EOG)" for the grasp posture based on EOG-map constructed from principal component analysis for finger joint angles in real subjects' grasps. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.