Integration of the Virtual Human in CA Design Review

The simulation of human behavior is of crucial importance in the automotive industry to ensure safe and ergonomic vehicle design. Ergonomic analysis based on virtual humans has to be integrated with the techniques of digital mockup and virtual prototyping. Our VIRGO (Virtual Ergonomic Test Suite) environment can be used for interactive 3D manipulation of the RAMSIS CAD human model and for 3D visualization of data obtained from ergonomic analysis. Both the ergonomic aspects and the related product data from a CAD system are visualized together and interdependencies are shown in an intuitive way. CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) middleware uses shared onotologies to capture the communication semantics of the individual components and integrate the environment.