Lars Hanson

• University of Skövde

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS In the context of Industry 5.0, our study advances manufacturing factory layout planning by integrating multi-objective optimization with nature-inspired algorithms and a digital human modeling tool. This approach aims to overcome the limitations of traditional planning methods, which often rely on engineers’ expertise and...

The manufacturing factory layout planning process is commonly supported by the use of digital tools, enabling creation and testing of potential layouts before being realised in the real world. The process relies on engineers’ experience and inputs from several cross-disciplinary functions, meaning that it is subjective, iterative and prone to error...

Factory layouts are frequently planned and designed in virtual environments, based on the experience of the layout planner. This planning and design process depends on information from several cross-disciplinary activities performed by several functions and experts, e.g., product development, manufacturing process planning, resource descriptions, e...

Today, manufacturing factory layout setups are most often manually designed and kept up-to-date during their lifecycle with computer-aided design software’s, so that analyses, verification simulations, and decisions can continuously be done. This manual approach is a cumbersome iterative process to collect the necessary information, with a high ris...

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are often associated with high costs for manufacturing companies and society, as well as negative effects on sustainable working life of workers. To both ensure workers’ well-being and reduce the costs of WMSDs, it is important to consider worker well-being in the design and operations of production pr...

The type of ergonomics assessment methods typically used in digital human modelling (DHM) tools and automated assessment processes were rather developed to be used by ergonomists to assess ergonomics by observing the characteristics of the work. Direct measurement methods complement observation methods. Direct measurement methods have a design that...

Simulation technologies are widely used in industry as they enable efficient creation, testing, and optimization of the design of products and production systems in virtual worlds, rather than creating, testing, and optimizing prototypes in the physical world. In an industrial production context, simulation of productivity and ergonomics helps comp...

The paper reports an investigation conducted during the DHM2020 Symposium regarding current trends in research and application of DHM in academia, software development, and industry. The results show that virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and digital twin are major current trends. Furthermore, results show that human diversity is consid...

This paper proposes an end-to-end method for automatic assembly quality inspection based on a point cloud domain adaptation model. The method involves automatically generating labeled point clouds from various CAD models and training a model on those point clouds together with a limited number of unlabeled point clouds acquired by 3D cameras. The m...

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONS Worker well-being and overall system performance are important elements in the design of production lines. However, studies of industry practice show that current design tools are unable to consider concurrently both productivity aspects (e.g., line balancing and cycle time) and worker well-being related aspects (e.g., the...

Factory setup lifecycles are most often described and prepared manually in CAD environments, based on experience and inputs from several cross-disciplinary processes. Early in the factory setup preparation, a so-called block layout is created. The intention is to describe a high-level view of the intended factory setup and to claim area reservation...

Simulation software is used in the production development process to simulate production and predict behaviors, calculate times, and plan production in advance. Digital human modeling (DHM) software is used to simulate humans working in production and assess whether workstation designs offer appropriate ergonomic conditions for the workers. However...

Vibrotactile feedback training may be one possible method for interventions that target at learning better work techniques and improving postures in manual handling. This study aimed to evaluate the short term effect of real-time vibrotactile feedback on postural exposure using a smart workwear system for work postures intervention in simulated ind...

There is a constant strive in industry to be competitive on the market, to manufacture with quality and productivity. At the same time, it is important to offer workers a sustainable work life. Research has shown a clear relationship between poor ergonomics and productivity losses and quality deficiencies, e.g. due to assembly errors, which also ca...

Simulations of future production systems enable engineers to find effective and efficient design solutions with fewer physical prototypes and fewer reconstructions. This can save development time and money and be more sustainable. Better design solutions can be found by linking simulations to multi-objective optimization methods to optimize multipl...

Some anthropometric measurements, such as body weight often show a positively skewed distribution. Different types of transformations can be applied when handling skewed data in order to make the data more normally distributed. This paper presents and visualises how square root, log normal and, multiplicative inverse transformations can affect the...

Digital human modeling (DHM) is an active field of research directed towards the goal of creating detailed digital models of the human body and its functions, as well as assessment methods for evaluating human interaction with products and production systems. These have many applications in ergonomics, design and engineering, in fields as diverse a...

How to design Human–Industrial Robot Collaborative (HIRC) workstations is one of the key challenges in the realisation of safe and efficient HIRC systems in industry. The aim of this paper is to present a simple method to be used in early phases of HIRC workstation design. The design method requires a simulation tool and is based on systematic desi...

Taking a holistic perspective is central in production development, aiming to optimize ergonomics and overall production system performance. Hence, there is a need for tools and methods that can support production companies to identify the production system alternatives that are optimal regarding both ergonomics and production efficiency. The paper...

The paper discusses relations of digital human modelling, embodied cognition and human behaviour modelling.

This paper presents the development of a software module and a graphical user interface which aims to support the definition of anthropometry of manikins in a digital human modelling (DHM) tool. The module is developed from user interviews and literature studies, as well as mathematical methods for anthropometric diversity consideration. The module...

IPS IMMA (Industrial Path Solutions - Intelligently Moving Manikins) is a digital human modeling tool developed in close cooperation between academia and industry in Sweden. The academic consortium behind the software consists of expertise within applied mathematics, ergonomics, and engineering. The development of IMMA was initiated from the vehicl...

There is a strong interest in the scope of human–industrial robot collaboration (HIRC) in manufacturing industry for greater flexibility and productivity. However, HIRC in manufacturing is still in its infancy; industrial practitioners have many apprehensions and uncertainties concerning the system’s performance and human operators’ safety. Therefo...

This paper presents the development of a software module and a graphical user interface which aims to support the definition of anthropometry of manikins in a digital human modelling (DHM) tool. The module is developed from user interviews and literature studies, as well as mathematical methods for anthropometric diversity consideration. The module...

The constant call in manufacturing for higher quality, efficiency, flexibility and cost effective solutions has been supported by technology developments and revised legislations in the area of collaborative robots. This allows for new types of workstations in industry where robots and humans co-operate in performing tasks. In addition to safety, t...

The development of a digital human modelling (DHM) based test procedure concept for the assessment of physical ergonomics conditions in virtual phases of the vehicle interior design process is illustrated and discussed. The objective of the test procedure is to be a valuable tool for ergonomic evaluations and decision support along the design proce...

This paper identifies and describes product development activities where ergonomics issues could be considered and illustrates how that could be done through a number of different approaches. The study is divided into two parts where an interview study is done to identify where in a product development process consideration of ergonomics issues are...

Nowadays, different technologies and software for ergonomics evaluations are gaining greater relevance in the field of ergonomics and production development. The tools allow users such as ergonomists and engineers to perform assessments of ergonomic conditions of work, both related to work simulated in digital human modelling (DHM) tools or based o...

Adverse work-related physical exposures such as repetitive movements and awkward postures have negative health effects and lead to large financial costs. To address these problems, a multi-disciplinary consortium was formed with the aim of developing an ambulatory system for recording and analyzing risks for musculoskeletal disorders utilizing text...

Working postures and movements affect work efficiency and musculoskeletal health. To reduce the biomechanical exposure in physically demanding settings, working techniques may be improved by giving instant ergonomic feedback to the operator. This study investigates if feedback can be used to decrease adverse postures and movements in assembly work....

A concept of a formalized test procedure for proactive assessment of ergonomic value by digital human modelling (DHM) tools in lean product development (LPD) is proposed and described. The objective of the formalized procedure is to integrate the utilization of DHM tools in LPD and to support the delivery of ergonomic value and reduce waste in prod...

What constitutes a company’s capabilities to develop a Smart Factory? South Korean and Swedish perspectives are here illustrated by company examples of smart factory solutions and related strategic aspects of their digitalization. It is concluded that the “smart-factory-capability” of a manufacturing company is integrated with its corporate product...

In order to fully utilise a 3D simulation software capable of evaluating hand-guided human-industrial robot collaborative (HIRC) work tasks, there is a need of a HIRC design process for early production development stages. This paper proposes a HIRC design method that uses the possibilities of the demonstrator software in the HIRC workstation desig...

This paper describes a study where diverse anthropometric data is included in the process of generating data for a group of virtual test persons. Data on body size, strength and ROM were either collected on an individual level or predicted and synthesized and then used in cluster analyses to generate six unique virtual test persons. Results show th...

In this paper we present a framework for digital human modelling using discrete mechanics and optimal control. Discrete mechanics is particularly well suited for modelling the dynamics of constrained mechanical systems, which is almost always the case when considering complex human models interacting with the environment. We demonstrate that, by us...

The global competition has forced manufacturing companies to further increase their productivity. This, together with technology development and changes in regulations, have led to the introduction of new types of workstations in production lines, where human operators collaborate with industrial robots to perform work tasks. As any type of product...

Manual assembly is a time and cost consuming phase of production. It is crucial to design the assembly process so that overall system efficiency, quality output and human well-being meet desired levels. Since manual assembly involve humans, one support in the production design process is to use digital human modelling (DHM) tools to model and asses...

This paper presents the development of an adaptive linear regression model for synthesizing of missing anthropometric population data based on a flexible set of known predictive data. The method is based on a conditional regression model and includes use of principal component analysis, to reduce effects of multicollinearity between selected predic...

The simulation possibilities of Human – Industrial Robot Collaboration (HIRC) are limited in commercial software and published research. In order to meet this a demonstrator software has been developed. This paper presents the combination of the quantitative output from the software (measuring operation time and biomechanical load) together with ex...

This paper describes a study where diversity in body size, strength and joint range of motion, together with diversity in other capability measurements, is included in the process of generating data for a group of test cases using cluster analysis. Descriptive statistics and correlation data was acquired for 15 variables for different age groups an...

The history, status and outlook of the research and development actions associated with the creation of the digital human modelling tool intelligently moving manikins (IMMA) are described. The underlying fundamental concepts are described and research and development results so far are illustrated or referred to. Two case studies illustrating use o...

The definition and use of boundary cases is a common approach when aiming to anthropometrically accommodate a desired percentage of the targeted population by a design. The cases are defined based on anthropometric data that represents the targeted population. Approaches that define cases based on the variation within just one body measurement are...

Driver-vehicle interaction analyses are done to ensure a successful vehicle design from an ergonomics perspective. Digital Human Modelling (DHM) tools are often used to support such verifications, particularly at early stages of the product development process. When verifying that a vehicle design accommodates the diversity of users and tasks, a DH...

The boundary case method is established for the representation and consideration of anthropometric diversity in design tasks with certain characteristics. Sometime boundary cases are defined separately for two distributions, e.g. for females and males, which may lead to a situation where some boundary cases will be redundant in that they are locate...

Driver-vehicle interaction analyses are done to ensure a successful vehicle design from an ergonomics perspective. Digital Human Modelling (DHM) tools are often used to support such verifications, particularly at early stages of the product development process. When verifying that a vehicle design accommodates the diversity of users and tasks, a DH...

The definition and use of boundary cases is a common approach when aiming to anthropometrically accommodate a desired percentage of the targeted population by a design. The cases are defined based on anthropometric data that represents the targeted population. Approaches that define cases based on the variation within just one body measurement are...

This paper presents an approach to automatically generate predetermined motion time system (PMTS) based assembly instruction lists from simulations within digital human modelling (DHM) software. A formal high-level instruction language is used to instruct an automated manikin to perform assembly operations. The manikin, the language and the assembl...

Human industrial robot collaboration (HIRC) aims to combine the benefits of industrial robots with humans in production environments. This is a growing research field where most work focuses on the safety aspects, while little research is performed on simulation and visualisation. The aim of this paper is to present demonstrator software for simula...

In this paper, a formal high-level language is used to generate simulations where a manikin assembles flexible cables. The language generates assembly instructions for the manikin, which automatically performs the corresponding assembly motion with as good ergonomic as possible. Due to weight, stiffness and narrow regions, it may be difficult to pe...

An extension to the application area for discrete event simulation (DES) has been ongoing since the last decade and focused only on economic aspects to include ecologic sustainability. With this new focus, additional input parameters, such as electrical power consumption of machines, are needed. This paper aim at investigating how NC machine power...

Digital human modelling (DHM) tools are useful when evaluating human-machine interaction as they enable consideration of anthropometric diversity by facilitating the creation of human models, so called manikins, of different sizes and proportions. This paper presents the design of a module, as part of a DHM tool, made to enable a more holistic appr...

The paper describes a basic approach for the establishment of representative test persons when performing accommodation analyses and wanting to simultaneously consider normal variation in three variables. The main application is for defining a number of different manikins when performing ergonomics simulations for boundary case based accommodation...

Digital human modelling (DHM) systems can be used to simulate production processes and analyse the human-machine interaction, particularly at early design stages. The human-machine interaction is affected and limited by factors or characteristics belonging to the human user and the machine or product but also the surrounding environment. DHM system...

INTRODUCTION Digital human modelling (DHM) has been introduced in the product and production development process to provide the possibility of early analysis and verification of human-product and human-production system interaction. Digital human modelling is relatively widely used within automotive industry (Paul et al., 2012). Digital human model...

In digital human modelling (DHM) systems consideration of anthropometry is central. Important functionality in DHM tools is the regression model, i.e. the possibility to predict a complete set of measurements based on a number of defined independent anthropometric variables. The accuracy of a regression model is measured by how well the model predi...

Although the degree of automation is increasing in manufacturing industries, many assembly operations are performed manually. To avoid injuries and to reach sustainable production of high quality, comfortable environments for the operators are vital. Poor station layouts, poor product designs or badly chosen assembly sequences are common sources le...

Use of digital human modeling (DHM) tools enables early assessment of ergonomic risks in the production development process. This early risk assessment can indicate needs for preventive actions in order to decrease risks for work-related musculoskeletal disorders. A method for the assessment of physical workload has been developed, for the analysis...

Virtual assembly and disassembly (VA&D) usage enables knowledge exchange between design department and assembly production and aftermarket in the product development (PD) process. Utilisation of VA&D tools must be connected to the PD process in robust methods to fully employ this potential. A case study was performed at a manufacturing company to i...

The paper addresses the call for methods that can assist designers to consider anthropometric diversity when designing products or workstations, and hence formulate more sustainable design solutions. A basic method for the definition of boundary manikins for bivariate design problems and combined populations is described, exemplified and evaluated....

Effective simulation of manual assembly operations considering ergonomic load and clearance demands requires detailed modeling of human body kinematics and motions, as well as a tight coupling to powerful algorithms for collision -free path planning. The focus in this paper is a unified solution that automatically creates assembly motions for manik...

This chapter addresses and demonstrates the application of digital human modelling (DHM) tools to consider anthropometric diversity in product and workplace design. A number of additional methods for evaluating ergonomics conditions are also illustrated. Three cases show how DHM tools can be applied in different design settings and for different de...

This paper describes and evaluates the boundary case methodology for the simultaneous consideration of variance for a number of selected anthropometric variables. The methodology includes the calculation of key dimension values for extreme but likely anthropometric measurement combinations. This data can be applied when utilising digital human mode...

When evaluating human-machine interaction in a virtual environment using Digital human modelling (DHM) it is important to ensure that the predicted motions lie within the range of behavioural diversity for different people within a population. This paper presents a study in which a comparison is made between motions predicted by the DHM tool IMMA (...

When evaluating human-machine interaction it is central to consider anthropometric diversity to ensure intended accommodation levels. A well-known method is the use of boundary cases where manikins with extreme but likely measurement combinations are derived by mathematical treatment of anthropometric data. The supposition by that method is that th...

Several digital human modelling (DHM) tools have been developed for simulation and visualisation of human postures and motions. In 2010 the DHM tool IMMA (Intelligently Moving Manikins) was introduced as a DHM tool that uses advanced path planning techniques to generate collision free and biomechanically acceptable motions for digital human models...

The increased computerisation of design and engineering work has led to the development of software such as digital human modeling (DHM) tools. These tools can be used to simulate and visualise human work and for evaluating ergonomic conditions. Observational-based ergonomics methods, such as RULA and OWAS, may be used for characterizing workload a...

This paper study and clarify problems, needs and opportunities when working with anthropometric diversity in digital human modelling (DHM) systems. A comparison between product development and production development in Swedish automotive industry is made. Interviews with DHM users and ergonomics specialists about their way of working with anthropom...

Digital Human Modeling (DHM) tools are useful for simulating human work and proactively evaluating ergonomic conditions. IMMA (Intelligently Moving Manikin) is a project that aims to develop software that combines digital human modeling and path planning. The work in the IMMA project is divided into a number of work packages that gradually increase...

In digital human modelling (DHM), ergonomics evaluations are typically done with few human models. However, humans vary a lot in sizes and shapes. Therefore, few manikins can rarely ensure accommodation of an entire target population. Different approaches exist on how to consider anthropometric diversity. This paper reviews current DHM tools and cl...

The overall rationale and assumption for the research project presented is this paper is that a fast, easy to use, and reliable procedure to predict and validate manual assembly tasks is of major importance in product and production development processes to ensure high and robust product quality and process performance. A basic condition for the re...

Manufacturing corporations sometimes use corporate-internal procedures to evaluate and monitor the ergonomic status of the workplace. This article describes an industrial case study in the Swedish automotive sector, where an internally developed evaluation procedure was compared with a procedure based on a Swedish national standard provision.It was...

Vehicle ingress is an important automotive industry issue. End-users and production line assemblers perform similar ingress tasks. In this study, comparisons were made of the car ingress motion in 40 subjects of different statures, acting both as assemblers and end-users. Half of the subjects were under 28 years of age and the remaining were over 6...

Digital human modelling (DHM) is commonly utilised for vehicle and workplace design in the automotive industry. More rarely are the tools applied in the health care industry, albeit having similar objectives for cost-efficiency and user-centred design processes. The paper illustrates how a DHM tool is modified and utilised to evaluate a bathing sys...

This paper illustrates how Digital Human Modeling (DHM) tool functionality can be increased through the development of industry specific features. The features are based on a design tool, the Mobility Gallery, established by the cooperating health care company. Each resident in the Mobility Gallery has different levels of functional mobility and is...