Virtual Hands for Risk Prevention Integration in Human-Computer Interactions

The development of virtual reality offers new possibilities to better simulate and understand the human/system interactions. The current challenge is to take into account the human being in order to generalize the use of ergonomics in the design stage. We propose to improve the simulation of the interactions between man and machine by estimating the risk level of the working situation. After reviewing the previous work, we present our virtual physically-based hands which are coupled with a virtual press-brake by using a motion capture system. Thus, the operator can interact in real-time with the virtual environment. By integrating a dynamic risk index, we can also estimate the degree of hazard of the current working situation