Škoda Auto
Industry: Car Manufacture
System: IGS-180i & JACK DRIVER
Synertial are proud to reveal that the European car manufacturer Skoda, part of the Volkswagen Group, has selected the Synertial IGS-180i Motion Capture System and IGS-JACK Driver after a thorough evaluation of the motion capture market.
During the evaluation, Skoda’s Digital Factory team made two requests:
- The system had to allow capture of actual workers on the assembly line where magnetic disturbances existed, as well as in the lab environment
- To be selected, the system had to stream real-time movement into Siemens JACK
The combination of Synertial’s IGS-JACK driver and the flexibility provided by the IGS-180i Motion Capture system addressed all of Skoda’s requirements.
We chose to work with Synertial, because it is impossible to create all the animations necessary for ergonomic simulation without motion capture. Synertial worked with us and provided the latest inertial mocap technology and superb customer service.
The health and safety of workers is a major concern for all manufacturers and protecting workers from injury through ergonomic assessment of their workplace is now required by legislation. Synertial expect to announce further key partnerships in the field of industrial ergonomics and biomechanics in coming months.
Synertial were able to work with us to provide a motion capture system that can be used to capture actual workers on the production line, not just training simulations in the lab.
Streaming real-time movement data into JACK saves Skoda time and money as we no longer require specialists to create JACK animations.” – SKODA project lead, Peter Skorik.
Motion Capture and Ergonomics at the workplace
One of the key requirements in production field today is to make the workplace as suitable for employees as possible – everything without influencing the efficiency of production. This is mostly based on raising workforce price and strict legislative in most countries. It is quite logical that companies reflect these facts and tries to deal with it and enhance ergonomics somehow.
The traditional approach based on broad experience and systematic work cannot be replaced, but as technology goes further, there are new ways how to make the pipeline faster, improve efficiency of workers who optimize ergonomics and last but not least, allow doing the optimization of workplace to workers without dozens of years of experience.
The new approach is dealing with ergonomics using digital factory tools, implementing motion capture as the motion data source. Many companies are using this approach already (Skoda, Hyundai, Boeing, Airbus, ..) and many will follow.
The most advanced solutions in the field of digital factory and ergonomics comes from Siemens (Jack, Process Simulate Human) and Dassault Systems (Delmia V5 Human, Catia V5).om open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API
But, there is always a but
For analyzing the ergonomic conditions at the workplace (using digital factory tools), you have to model workers movements. Even though ergonomic tools are sophisticated enough, this task is the most time-consuming in the whole optimization process.
Expert estimation (and our own experience proves that) says that it takes 4 hours to create just 1 minute of the workers tasks! And this applies only for expert user in particular ergonomic tool (Delmia or Siemens). This is not because the tool is hard to use, it just takes some time to cover all human body degrees of freedom to get natural-looking movement at the end.
Here comes the motion capture technology
Why not to use motion capture to solve this problem? The best of it is that it allows you to capture REAL and NATURAL human motions REAL-TIME. There is some post processing necessary, but you can imagine that it is great leap from “4-hour work for 1 minute simulation” to “few-minute capture for 1 minute simulation”. In fact, with inertial motion capture systems the post processing is often not necessary and when it is, it is quicker to record the motion one more time to fix it.
Inertial motion capture systems, especially Synertial IGS 180i, are the ideal solution for motion capture in industrial praxis – here we need flexibility, reliability and compatibility, something Synertial motion capture suits can deliver.
Flexibility
It is not a problem anymore to create case study of putting material into shelf (new shelf design virtually in laboratory or real one at the workplace), to analyse assembly task directly on the assembly line, to find out the visibility of worker while performing the assembly, to analyse car driver seat adjustment in real car interior, .. .
Inertial motion capture systems are really easy to start – for example with Synertial IGS 180i it takes only few minutes to put the suit on the worker, turn on the wireless unit, calibrate the system (one click) and you are ready to capture.
Virtual environment for case studies
With Synertial IGS systems you can capture anywhere – they are light and comfortable, works wireless and battery lasts for 2 hours (and is easily replaceable with the spare). At the other end, you need just one laptop and wireless router (which works on batteries too and is included with the system), so you are super-portable and if you follow (ideally 30 meters of less) the captured subject, the capture area is unlimited!
Reliability
Synertial motion capture systems calibrates the sensors before each use, therefore the system is still fresh and precise. Industrial line – IGS 180i – is provided with special industrial suit which covers sensors from being hit and cables being stuck in the work environment. If something goes wrong, it is trivial to replace broken sensor and continue the work.
The magnetic compensation feature is included in all Synertial systems and IGS 180i for industrial use implements its enhanced version to survive heavy industrial environment without problems. Now capturing motions is possible in previously forbidden areas for inertial motion capture systems – assembly line, welding shop or car interior – as many of our customers verify every day.
Compatibility
DigitalWorks created communication interface for Siemens ergonomics software – Jack and Process Simulate Human for all Synertial motion capture systems. That means you are now able to see and analyse workers natural motions from real workplace, working on real tasks in REAL-TIME (offline replay possible also). This interface is called IGS Jack and together with EtherJack (DigitalWorks sync tool) allows you to operate the figure body (IGS 180i) together with fingers (IGS Glove) effectively.
Interface for Dassault Systems – Delmia is available also.
To list other options, Synertial provides drivers for: MotionBulider, Unity, Unreal and Panda 3D.
Synertial, world leader in inertial motion capture systems, provides wide range of motion capture systems – from basic models (IGS 150) to high end “All body” (IGS 180i + 2 x IGS Glove) solutions.
With DigitalWorks you get personal approach while consulting, designing, delivering and using motion capture system – we are there for you.
Let us help you to get from modelling motions to analyzing them.
Don’t hesitate to contact us!
