While it is recognized that collisions involve pedestrians of all sizes, this Information Report addresses performance specifications for a midsize adult male research dummy. This approach stems from the greater knowledge of biomechanics and existing dummy technologies for the midsize male relative to other adult sizes and children. While not the initial objective, it is envisioned that additional performance specifications for other sizes of pedestrian research dummies will be developed in the future based on accepted scaling procedures.
The specific requirements for the pedestrian dummy have been based on a collective assessment of pedestrian injury, response, and anthropometry priorities from the experimental, epidemiologic, and computational literature. In general, the objective was to specify performance specifications based on human characteristics and the impact response of post-mortem human subjects rather than to specify the design of a particular physical device.
Based on the perceived applications for a research pedestrian dummy, the primary focus of this document centered on biofidelic whole-body kinematics during a vehicle-pedestrian impact. Specific body regions were prioritized (see A.1.5) based on a combination of pedestrian injury, including both severity and frequency. Based on the priorities established by a review committee, the specifications provided in this document include both mandatory and recommended requirements as indicated by the terms “shall” and “should,” respectively. As pedestrian injury trends and dummy hardware continue to evolve in the future, it is anticipated that this document will expand to include more mandatory requirements in more body regions.
Finally, it should be noted that the test procedures described in this document only apply to the specific tests required to assess pedestrian dummy biofidelity. It is anticipated that pedestrian dummies meeting the performance criteria of this document will be used in a wide variety of tests, requiring specialized test and data procedures.