Daimler has announced that the company will be presenting ‘Ergonomics Simulation in Trucks’ at the 2015 CeBIT in Hanover, Germany.
The technology is a part of the company's applied reference architecture for virtual services and applications (ARVIDA) project, which aims to address the ergonomic needs of the truck drivers at early stage in the development process of a truck cab.
Daimler said that the drives spends most of the time on the cab of a truck where he works, lives and sleeps, and Mercedes-Benz uses virtual tools to check if the access to the cab is easy, and the necessary controls are within easy reach of the driver.
The automaker has teamed up with Mechatronics in Chemnitz, Human Solutions Assyst in Kaiserslautern and Advanced Realtime Tracking (ART) in Weilheim (Upper Bavaria) for the project.
Presently, developers are using RAMSIS software simulates a model of a human to analyze accessibility, available space, comfort, various fields of vision as well as belt routing.
Daimler ergonomics researcher Richard Sauerbier said: "Compared with a passenger car, studies into the ergonomics of a truck cover a much wider spectrum.
"Movements inside the truck, such as lying, standing or opening of stowage compartments, represent a major challenge - not to mention the complex process of climbing in and out using several steps and grab handles."
At CeBIT, Daimler is planning to showcase the virtual tracking scene 'Climbing into the cab' on an Actros truck.
For the purpose, the company will deploy a test person, which will be fitted with around 60 optical markers to supply data on every movement.
Daimler Trucks Cab Development project manager Roland Stechow said that by the end of the project in 2016, the company wants to have 3D ergonomics analyses of motion sequences as early as the concept development phase of a vehicle.
