ABSTRACT
Although virtual reality (VR) technology has been applied by many researchers for product design ergonomics evaluation, previous researches only consider a simple virtual environment (VE) in which the digital human model (DHM) could only touch the virtual objects but could not grab and manipulate them. Such simple VE is not sufficient for sophisticated ergonomics evaluation tasks. To build an interactionrich, DHM-included VE, behavior scripts are used to program the desired interaction models. One problem in constructing such interaction-rich VE is that the interaction model is usually subject to change. When conducting ergonomics evaluation, the domain experts often want to change the interaction model. As the domain experts are usually not familiar with 3D programming, it is important to have an interaction model that is easy to be interpreted and modified by domain
*corresponding author, tsun@saturn.yzu.edu.tw
experts. This paper discusses a method to facilitate systematic and structured development of interaction-rich, human-included VE. The interaction model is divided into two parts. The first part contains the low-level, domain-independent behavior scripts that implement object grabbing and manipulation. The second part contains a Petri-net (PN) for domain experts to define the interaction scenarios. The PN-based graphic representation makes it easier for domain experts to understand and modify the interaction scenarios.
