Virtual Prototyping for Human-Centric Design

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This grant provides funding for the simulation of the sense of contact and force when interacting with human-centric mechanical CAD designs. Human-centric CAD designs are those whose ultimate purpose is to be used by humans, for example, a car's interior design. The location and feel of surfaces, and the accessibility and manipulability of controls, will be prototyped through force feedback from a haptic interface, the Sarcos Dextrous Arm Master. The use of the Sarcos Master allows a user to reach and grasp naturally, and to feel both external forces of contact and internal forces of grasping. Utilizing directly the underlying complex geometries of the design (trimmed NURBS surfaces), surface-to-surface geometrical computations will be developed to model the bumping of the arm when reaching and the grasping by the hand of controls. A global minimum distance calculation will identify areas of potential contact, and then fast local surface tracing computations will model detailed geometrical interaction. Realistic surface models for friction, texture, and softness will be developed based on measurements of real surfaces. The mechanical action of controls such as switches will be similarly modeled.The goal of virtual prototyping is to replace physical mockups with computational mockups, thereby greatly decreasing costs and speeding up iterations in the design. When a design's purpose is to be used by a human, it is similarly desirable to prototype a human's interaction with the design without building a physical prototype. To date only stereoscopic visual displays have been available to examine a design, but a complete evaluation should allow designers to reach, touch, grasp, and manipulate virtual objects in the design, as if using their own arms against real objects. The determination of how easy it is to reach and manipulate controls in a cluttered car interior will lead to more ergonomically satisfactory designs.