On the applicability of digital human models for personal equipment design

Abstract

Digital Human Models (DHMs) have developed from academic research into valuable engineering tools. They offer a vast amount of functionality for modeling and simulation of anthropometric dimensions, reach, vision, movement, and comfort. Today's DHMs are primarily used in automotive design. As our previous studies have shown, a simple transfer to other application domains (e.g. workplace design) may be possible but result into inaccuracies. With the following study we analyzed the applicability of two typical DHMs for the design of personal equipment and for identifying potential conflicts between different pieces of equipment. Such an application differs strongly from automotive applications, but many similar uses of DHMs can be observed in daily life. The analysis addresses different aspects: At first, the general functionality of the DHMs was screened. Required functions were either available instantly, available by workarounds, or unavailable. A subsequent verification and validation study analyzed potential shortcoming for the available functions. It consists of an empirical survey with different typical soldiers' movements. The data include maximum reach, focusing a target with a binocular or aiming with different postures. A number of motion sequences were selected for the analysis. Results show that simple movements were modeled quite accurately. But complex movements were hardly possible to model and large inaccuracies were observed. An important functional shortcoming resulted from limited possibilities to integrate virtual objects of personal equipment into the DHM. This prevented an analysis of conflicts between personal equipment. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.