Robotics enable the simulation and animation of the Virtual Human

Abstract

This article takes well-known methods in robotics and combines them in order to enable the simulation and animation of the Virtual Human - a model of human kinematics. The Virtual Human consists of standard kinematic chains, that are arranged and coupled with each other to approximate the degrees of freedom of the human body. The anthropomorphic multi-robot system resulting from this coupling is controlled as a multiagent-system, where the control has originally been developed to coordinate multi-robot systems in industrial applications[1][6], as well as to simulate humanoid robots, such as Justin[2][3]. By the simulation and animation of the Virtual Human we analyze ergonomic conditions at manual workplaces. Here, we develop examples of how results from the field of ergonomics can help to consider the human factor during the design and optimization phases of production lines.