Physical and virtual simulation approaches for the analysis of ergonomics of the product

This work wants to point out one particular aspect of the design process: the study of the ergonomics of the product under development. Two steps of ergonomic analysis have been conducted. The first one is a physical simulation of the installation of a product, in order to acquire the movement of the subject that executes the task and the forces exchanged during the task. The second step is a virtual simulation of the same movement, created by the mean of a human based simulation system; the second step utilizes the data of the movement collected in the first step. A common biomedical measure has been utilized as a mean of comparison and validation of the two different approaches. A series of project related issue and future development have been discussed.