“Just like in the movies, we hook people up with sensors to understand exactly how they move when they are interacting with their vehicles,” said Gary Strumolo, manager of Ford research and engineering. “Once we have all that motion captured, we create virtual humans that we can use to run thousands of tests that help us understand how people of all sizes and shapes interact with all kinds of vehicle designs. It’s an incredibly efficient way of engineering tomorrow’s vehicles.”

To really understand how people of all sizes fit into and interact with Ford's vehicles, human test subjects are fitted with up to 50 motion-capture sensors and asked to perform a series of movements you might make while in a car. Data from the sensors is then loaded into a database, which helps create digital human models.

The technology helps Ford avoid the "time and guesswork" that comes with asking people subjective questions on how comfortable they find any given interior. Then there's the Immersive Virtual Evaluation lab, which also aids Ford's move into the virtual realm.

“This technology enables us to evaluate many vehicle exterior and interior alternatives in a virtual environment from any location -- in the driver’s seat or hundreds of feet away from the vehicle – with animated characters and vehicles,” said Elizabeth Baron, a technical specialist in Virtual Reality and Advanced Visualization at Ford.

One room in the lab projects images onto three walls and the ceiling, producing interiors and exteriors at actual scale. If this technology really makes developing vehicles easier and less expensive, look for Ford to use it even more over the next couple years as it continues its drive to return to profitability by 2011.

Source: Ford