Driving Posture Assessment: A New Approach

In this paper, a new theoretical model for driving posture assessment is proposed. Other than many models that focused on sitting (dis-)comfort evaluation, our model incorporated both sitting and driving activities such as steering and pedal control. By regarding both subjective and objective posture evaluation methods, we summarized several important findings from literature in this field and extracted three aspects for driving posture evaluation, i.e. accommodating various sitting strategies, reducing physical strain, and allowing optimum physical performance of drivers. Major impact factors were selected accordingly to determine the essential parameters for a more holistic evaluation process. These could be used for further development of digital human modeling software like RAMSIS. This new model would potentially allow a more effective and ergonomic occupant packaging.