Övers. av: Aktiva humanmodeller för virtuell åkanderespons: del 2

The risk for a vehicle occupant to sustain an injury in a crash is reduced in vehicles that are equipped with systems that autonomously brake the vehicle before a crash. Hence, the reduced impact velocity results in a reduced injury risk. Additional occupant protection can be achieved if also occupant restraints are initiated in situations in which the vehicle autonomously brakes. Such initiations can be to pre-tense the seat belts, to help keep or put the occupant in a good position for the protection systems. In an emergency braking sequence the vehicle occupant can interact with the vehicle interior by resisting the forward motion by tensing the muscles in the body. To develop occupant protection systems that interact with the occupant before the impact there is a need to also take the muscle response of the occupants into account. However, such tools are not available. Therefore in this project a mathematical (finite element) human model with active muscles was developed. The model can predict the kinematics of a vehicle occupant, both driver and passenger, in an emergency braking (autonomous braking) vehicle up to 2 seconds braking of the vehicle prior to potential impact. To develop and validate the active human body model, volunteer tests (20) in braking vehicles were carried out to collect necessary data. Both autonomous braking and voluntary braking tests were carried out. Drivers as well as passengers were included. A significant amount of data was collected, such as video recordings of the motion of the occupants, forces in the steering wheel, force in the brake pedal and force in the foot rest. To model muscle tensing of occupants during vehicle braking, the activity of selected muscles of the volunteers were recorded using Electromyografi (EMG) measurements.