Driver Accommodation Assessment Using Physics-Based Posture Prediction Model

Abstract

Driver accommodation plays an important role in driver and vehicle safety. Many vehicles on the market do not have proper driver seat adjustment range due to the lack of efficient methods to assess an optimal adjustment range for all drivers. Traditional methods are mainly from experiments. They are time-consuming and expensive. This study aims to develop a simulation-based method by using physics-based posture prediction to assess driver accommodation easily and efficiently. Three different types of vehicles-a sedan (Car 1), a SUV (Car 2) and a truck (Car 3) were used to demonstrate the procedure of the proposed method. A global optimization technique-pattern search was adapted for solving the physics-based posture prediction. Population sampling method was used to generate the digital human models between 5th and 95th % females and males (in stature and weight) separately. Also, for a special population-pregnant woman, digital human models were created and used in simulations. The maximum break force 100 N was implemented in the prediction model. As a result, driver seat adjustment ranges in horizontal direction were found to be 218 ± 14, 222 ± 17 and 207 ± 12 mm for Car 1, Car 2 and Car 3, respectively. Likewise, adjustment ranges in vertical direction were found to be 54 ± 3, 57 ± 2 and 59 ± 3 mm. The proposed method can be used in early stages of design as a computer aided engineering tool in order to reduce time and cost.

F2012-E05-001