China's first home produced virtual human designed for automobile accident testing was "born" on Wednesday. The invention means that the country will not be solely dependent on imported test dummies.
The virtual human has passed the necessary tests carried out by the national supervision and inspection center for automobiles, said a report in the Tianfu Morning Post, in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province.
About 1.8 meters tall, the model was built to match the physiology of an adult man, the report quoted Professor Lin Daquan, the dummy's designer as saying.
Such accident test dummies are made of bionic bones, muscle, skin and organs, said Lin. His virtual human is made of bionic materials, comprises 366 parts and is worth more than 200,000 yuan (US$24,000).
Through sensors fitted to it everything that happens during a crash is recorded and can be inspected, said Lin from Sichuan University.
The dummy can provide invaluable information about the consequences of both head on crashes and those in which the vehicle turns over.
With the auto industry developing at such a pace and with more and more families taking to the roads, Lin plans to design a whole range of virtual humans.
The existing dummy is the first member of a family, which will eventually include children of different ages, women and elderly people, he said.
The report said Lin's laboratory, the Sichuan laboratory for bionic machines, is the only base for bionic materials and dummies in China and also the third largest base for virtual human models in the world.
(China Daily June 13, 2003)
