Integrating digital human modeling into virtual environment for ergonomic oriented design

Virtual human simulation integrated into virtual reality a plications is mainly used for virtual representation of theuser in virtual environment or for interactions between the user an d the virtual avatar for cognitive tasks. In this paper, in order t o prevent musculoskeletal disorders, the integration of virtua l human simulation and VR application is presented to facilitate ph ysical ergonomic evaluation, especially for physical fatigueevaluation of a given population. Immersive working environmen ts are created to avoid expensive physical mock-up in conventi onal evaluation methods. Peripheral motion capture systems are used to capture natural movements and then to simulate the physic al operations in virtual human simulation. Physical aspects o human’s movement are then analyzed to determine the effort lev el of each key joint using inverse kinematics. The physical fat igue level of each joint is further analyzed by integrating a fati gue and recovery model on the basis of physical task parameters.All the process has been realized based on VRHIT platform and a case study is presented to demonstrate the function of the ph ysical fatigue for a given population and its usefulness for wo rker selection.

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