Simulation of complex human movement through the modulation of observed motor tasks

Abstract

A method for the simulation of human movements driven by real data and correlated with modification of constraints in the external environmental is presented. It was applied to the simulation of the car ingress changing the configuration of the doorway to check early on in the design the man-machine-interface requirements for choosing the best ergonomie solution among different alternative solutions without the physical construction of prototypes. The method for the simulation of the movement is based on the modulation of a real measured performance recorded through an opto-electronic system for motion analysis. The algorithm implements a multifactorial target function to solve the redundancy problem. The reliability of the method was tested through the comparison of simulated and real data showing promising developments in ergonomics. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.