Virtual techniques for concept-development at VOLKSWAGEN commercial vehicles

The increasing shortening of development cycles constitutes the challenge for the vehicle development to develop more and more complex vehicles in less time. To meet these requirements VOLKSWAGEN Commercial Vehicles uses increasingly virtual techniques. The newest development tool at VOLKSWAGEN Commercial Vehicles is a Virtual Reality Ergonomic Test Bench. The core of the system is a Head-Mounted-Display (HMD). The HMD shows the user a high quality digital mock-up of a complete car-interior as in the past only extensive physical mock-ups could represent. In result of using a HMD the test person is completly optical seperated from the environment. To give the test person a feedback about his own body in the virtual environment an optical motion tracking system in conjunction with a digital human model is used. The Virtual Ergonomic Test Bench enables to perform ergonomic tests like the evaluation of drivers-, and instruments-view, space-feeling and control interaction in the virtual environment. The virtual interior simulation based on CAD-datas. This makes it possible to evaluate ergonomics in early development stages immediate after origin. In addition to that various alternative mock-ups can be compared with each other by a button click. In this report the technical specifications of the Virtual Ergonomic Test Bench will be described and some examples of application. in the development process will be given.