Using computer modeling and visualization techniques to incorporate anthropometric analysis into design

This research is a branch of an interdisciplinary research area called computer-aided ergonomics, which utilizes computer-based techniques to incorporate ergonomic analysis into design environment. Anthropometry, which concerns about the size and proportion of the human body, is one of the important aspects of ergonomics problems and a major research interest in this study.; This research uses computer modeling and visualization techniques to incorporate anthropometric analysis into the design and information process, which could provide effective means to study the effects of anthropometric constraints in the early stage of design. A project on developing dynamic arm reach of people constrained in wheelchairs for workspace design was selected to address the modeling and visualization process and to show one of the potential applications of this research.; Traditional diagrams of arm reach are based on measurements of static arm reach and therefore cannot fully address the dynamic nature of functional arm reach. They can only be used as the baseline for design, and the inaccuracy and incompleteness of static arm reach makes it difficult for designers to perform anthropometric analysis in CAD environment. This study uses computer models to represent the different anthropometric measurements and develops dynamic arm reach from animation and programming.; Comparing computer-generated dynamic arm reach with data from experiments on real people and traditional diagrams, we found that dynamic arm reach generated from computer-based anthropometric models had a good match with data from real people and the computer models could represent the variations in functional abilities of people with different anthropometric measurements. Therefore computer-based anthropometric models could provide more accurate and complete information of arm reach information than traditional 2D static diagrams.