Generation of Virtual Man Models Representative of Different Body Proportions and Application to Ergonomic Design of Vehicles

To get early and reliable evaluations of preliminary 3D design on workplaces and vehicles it is essential to utilise manikins corresponding as much as possible to actual persons. This paper describes a methodology to generate body typologies from anthropometric data of Italian population, identifying realistic combinations of anthropometric measurements actually found among real subjects. We applied these results to Jack, a software with an interactive virtual human model able to be manipulated by adjusting individual joints to simulate realistic postures. We then made a postural comfort comparative test, using the new manikins and standard Human Scale manikins obtaining quite different results: in particular, with the former manikins we found lower comfort indexes because they show a higher global variability, important to consider when designing systems fitting the characteristics of a large part of the population.