Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14320
n n n n Simulation Putting Science to A virtual soldier moves onto the factory floor to help workers avoid stress and injury By Barbara Robertson Digital humans with starring roles in feature films and video games might capture the most attention, but behind the scenes, software programs shaped like vir- tual people are hard at work in re- search institutions, industry, and, especially, in the armed forces. One such digital human, Santos, the first-born avatar in Iowa University’s Virtual Soldier Research (VSR) program, recently reported for duty in a new type of battleground: the US automobile industry. Santos has taken a factory job at Ford Motor Company. Private Santos Previously, the US Army Natick Soldier Re- search, Development, and Engineering Center (NSRDEC) outside Boston en- listed Santos to simulate the effective- ness of body armor, one of several ways the virtual soldier has served the Department of Defense. Re- cently, for example, Santos Work began evaluating equipment loads for the Office of Naval Research. “Tere are lots of software pro- grams that can do biomechanics, but Santos is the only one that can predict motion,” says Karim Abdel- Malek, cofounder and CTO for Santos- Groups of virtual muscles inside Santos actuate joints using calculations based in physics and provide data on joint-based strength and fatigue. 32 July 2010 Human, Inc., the company that is moving Santos out of the university’s lab and into the market. “Te difference is wide and huge. San- tos reacts to things using predictive dynamics. Everyone else records motion, brings it to soft- ware, and analyzes that motion. We tell San- tos, ‘You go do it,’ and he may or may not. We can load him with gear, put a helmet on him, tell him a joint is injured, and then tell him to walk, run, dive, and take a prone position. He tells us if it would be possible to do that and how he would execute it.” In 2004, Abdel-Malek, then a robotics pro- fessor specializing in motion prediction and human simulations at the University of Iowa’s Center for Computer-Aided Design, began