Workspace zone differentiation and visualization for virtual humans

Abstract

Human performance measures such as discomfort and joint displacement play an important role in product design. The virtual human Santos, a new generation of virtual humans developed at the University of Iowa, goes directly to the computer-aided design model to evaluate a design, saving time and money. This paper presents an optimization-based workspace zone differentiation and visualization. Around the workspace of virtual humans, a volume is discretized to small zones and the posture prediction on each central point of the zone will determine whether the points are outside the workspace as well as the values of different objective functions. Visualization of zone differentiation is accomplished by showing different colours based on values of human performance measures on points that are located inside the workspace. The proposed method can subsequently help ergonomic design. For example, in a vehicle's interior, the controls should not only lie inside the workspace, but also in the zone that encloses the most comfortable points. Using the palette of colours inside the workspace as a visual guide, a designer can obtain a reading of the discomfort level of product users.

The role of anthropometry in designing for sustainability

“…Santos (Yang et al 2008) or families of manikins (Bittner 2000) are popular in industrial communities, such as automotive, aircraft, military, etc.…”

Development of a Zone Differentiation Tool for Visualization of Postural Comfort

“…Vehicle designs based on this kind of tool improve comfort and safety. This paper is an extension of our pilot study on zone differentiation (Yang et al, 2007a(Yang et al, , 2007b. We first summarize the optimization-based approach to posture prediction, which is the basis for the zone differentiation tool.…”

Human reach envelope and zone differentiation for ergonomic design

“…To the authors' knowledge nobody has investigated this problem in the past. This section presents an optimization-based approach (Yang, Sinokrot, & Abdel-Malek, 2008) to differentiate and visualize the zones inside the workspace or on the surface. This zone differentiation tool shows not only the reach envelope but also the different discomfort levels for different zones.…”

“…Then, an optimization-based zone differentiation method within human workspace and on surfaces on the design panels of products is presented. The optimizationbased zone differentiation method was developed by Yang, Sinokrot, and Abdel-Malek (2008). This method not only shows the reachability (reach envelope), but also shows the discomfort levels inside the workspace or on the reachable surfaces.…”