Physical Human Driver Interaction
We compute various musculoskeletal indicators of human performance when the driver is operating a vehicle under normal and emergency maneuvering.
The physical interaction between the driver and vehicle system is important in the design of effective driver assist and occupant packaging systems. In this study, we compute various musculoskeletal indicators of human performance when the driver is operating a vehicle under normal and emergency maneuvering. Toward this goal, we have developed a full-body musculoskeletal model in the OpenSim musculoskeletal modeling platform. The human drivers are motion captured using an optical motion capture system. The captured motion is applied to subject specific models of each driver to compute various quantities such as joint torque due to gravitational effects, total kinetic energy, and metabolic energy consumption.