Ergonomic Evaluation Of Virtual Assembly Tasks

This paper investigates the use of Virtual Reality and Human Simulation technologies for the ergonomic evaluation of manual assembly tasks. Within this concept, a virtual environment has been developed for the realistic representation of assembly stations into which digital humans can be imported and be used in order to evaluate assembly executions, in terms of ergonomics aspects. The industrial need lies on the reduction of process time and on the ergonomic optimization of the assembly workstations. The use of this environment enables the identification of critical steps, during an assembly execution that causes stress to humans and results in increased assembly times and over wearied operators. A real life assembly task of a commercial refrigerator has been simulated and presented in order for its environment capabilities to be demonstrated.