Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/14320
Simulation n n n n a research program for the Defense Depart- ment. Te goal was to study human dynamics in the virtual world. Te result was the VSR program, which begat Santos. In 2007, a collaboration between General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford, known as USCar, supplied more funding, with each manufactur- er’s $500,000 contribution over the past three years adding to the approximately $10 million supplied by the federal government. “We knew that the area of dynamic evaluation would ben- efit us all,” says Allison Stephens, technical spe- cialist in assembly ergonomics at Ford. “Tis has been an exciting research project that’s fi- nally coming into implementation.” Te following year, in July 2008, a group of faculty members and researchers at VSR founded SantosHuman: Malek; Timothy Marler, chief research officer; Jasbir Arora, chief science officer; and Steven Beck, chief operations officer. Tey hired Jay A. Johnson as CEO in December. “My first assignment was to complete the licensing that allowed the University of Iowa research foundation to transfer the software and science to a for-profit company,” Johnson says. By April 2009, the new company was ready for business and a continuing collabora- tion with Iowa University researchers. Te researchers modeled Santos in Auto- desk’s Maya; they have a close relationship with the Maya developers in Montreal. “One of [the Maya team’s] main projects is to create detailed, high-fidelity human models, so we’ve been helping each other get there,” Malek says. “We make Santos pretty in Maya and then bring him into the real-time simulation environment.” Inside the Maya skin, which a user can stretch to create a tall, small, fat, or skinny Santos, are groups of virtual muscles that actuate joints us- ing calculations based in physics. Te muscles have an activation value, and the joints have a torque value. “We can evaluate joint-based strength and fatigue to calculate the strength and fatigue of the whole body in real time,” says Marler. “Conceptually, we start at the joints, and everything grows from there. Ten, it’s about what Santos can do. He can predict a posture, a motion, a muscle wrapping, and di- rection, and provide output about what he can or can’t do. Sometimes, just a pass/fail.” Blue-collar Santos So, how will all that help Ford build cars? For the past three years, as part of the USCar proj- ect, Stephens has worked with Laura Frey on the VSR team to collect human strength data. “She puts students in a chair and has them move an arm quickly to change weight and get Ford’s specialists in assembly ergonomics will feed dynamic strength curves based on data collected at the University of Iowa into Santos so that he can analyze stress and fatigue caused by dynamic work. July 2010 33