Computer integrated reconfigurable experimental platform for ergonomic study of vehicle body design

A computer integrated reconfigurable experimental platform is introduced for the ergonomic studies of vehicle body design. Its hardware system consists of lights and camera equipment, and most importantly, many movable parts whose positions and orientations can be adjusted to meet various requirements of ergonomic study. The movements of these parts are driven by actuators. Its software components are a control system, a visualisation system, and a data acquisition system. The control system is operated by human beings to issue the motion commands for system reconfiguration, the visualisation system monitors the reconfigurable platform in the reconfiguration process and ergonomic studies, and the data acquisition system acquires all meaningful data in the integrated experiment platform. Those data include the positions and all movable parts, the status of lighting and camera equipment, and trajectories and postures when a test driver enters or exits the platform. These data can be utilised to optimise the vehicle exterior components to meet the ergonomic needs of different drivers. In this paper, the virtual control and the validation of system set-up are mainly discussed. System architecture is presented, and the designs of hardware and software components are introduced. Two graphical user interface (GUI) systems have been developed for the control and the visualisation of the reconfigurable experimental platform. The visibility study is conducted to ensure a type of motion tracking equipment is appropriate to collect the data of entering and exiting movements by a driver during experiments.