Linking Human Performance and Anthropometric Models Through an Open Architecture

Modeling and simulation have become integral parts of the engineering process and will assume an even greater role in the years ahead. DoD initiatives like Simulation-Based Acquisition mandate a central role of simulation in systems design and engineering. As system engineers and designers rely increasingly on simulation to address design issues, there is an increasing need to develop integrated simulation and modeling environments to support human factors analysis. This paper addresses how and why it would be beneficial to link human process models to human figure models. We discuss how the linked models promote visualization of human factors design concepts. For example, capturing timing and error information from a human figure model greatly enhances the validity of the human process model. Likewise, using human process models to represent the aspects of the process that do not require a human figure model allows larger, more complex processes to be modeled.