Modeling People Wearing Body Armor and Protective Equipment: Applications to Vehicle Design

Vehicle interiors are complex human-machine interfaces, posing substantial design challenges, particularly when the vehicle is also a workplace. These challenges are compounded by the wide variability in human size, shape, and preference. For law-enforcement officers, firefighters, soldiers, and other workers, specialized clothing or body borne gear can affect their accommodation, comfort, safety, and ability to perform. Digital human modeling has the potential to provide designers with accurate tools to represent human variability, but current software generally lacks the ability to represent accurate seated body shapes for occupants with body borne protective equipment. This paper presents an overview of research to develop body shape modeling tools for vehicles that incorporate body armor representations. Laser scan data drawn from a large-scale study of men in seated postures was used to develop a predictive model that generates body shape as a function of standard anthropometric dimensions and seat and workspace variables. The model is postured using a data-based approach that incorporates the effects of body armor and gear on posture. Importantly, the space claim for the body armor and body borne gear is validated by reference to laser scan data.