Car egress analysis of younger and older drivers for motion simulation

Abstract

This paper presents a detailed description of car egress motion by younger and older participants. The objective of these analyses is to gather knowledge about egress motion in order to simulate them using a Digital Human Model. Seven young (from 20 to 35 years old) and eighteen older volunteers (from 63 to 82 years old) participated in the experiment. Their ingress and egress motions were captured for 4 different types of car. Motions were reconstructed through inverse kinematics using the RPx Software and the RAMSIS ® model. Motions were analysed through the interactions between the participant and the environment. Key-frames were defined in order to split the motionsup. Two main car egress strategies were observed: ‘Left Leg first’ (LLF) and ‘Two Legs Out’ (TLO). Only older participants used the TLO strategy. For each strategy, a detailed motion description is presented together with the identification of sub-strategies and constraints. The motion descriptions and the constraints also help to better understand the difficulties of older people when getting out of a car. All motion constraints described in this study should be considered to simulate realistic egress motion.