ABSTRACT
Significant research efforts have been given to general digital human model and occupational accommodation for vehicles and workstations. However, no one has developed digital pregnant woman models or studied issues associated with pregnant women. This paper presents a new digital pregnant woman model and the study and simulation of seated posture prediction for pregnant women in order to explore the effects of pregnancy size and shape on seated posture and provide insight for future studies. This newly developed digital pregnant woman model has considered not only the anatomy of a general human with joints and links but also the changing size and shape throughout the course of the pregnancy. In simulation, the digital model is required to touch specific points in space from a seated position. Optimal joint angles are then calculated by simultaneously minimizing joint displacement and the distance between the right and left hands and their targets using multi-objective optimizations techniques. This optimization is naturally subject to physical and kinematical constraints. The physical constraints applied to a pregnant woman obviously vary from that of conventional posture prediction due to the unique physical movement limitations that apply only to this demographic.
