Wired

A virtual human, Santos may save corporations big money and help the military save lives.

“Human modeling technology today is so refined, we can use it to test products before they’re ever produced,” said Karim Abdel-Malek, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Virtual Soldier Research program at Iowa.

Because just about every manufactured product begins its life in the form of CAD data, a reduced prototype version can be loaded into the system, where it appears onscreen in three dimensions. With a mouse click on a control panel that resembles a PDA, an operator can command Santos to interact with the digital prototype, replicating how a human would engage with it in the real world. A physical prototype becomes unnecessary, saving manufacturing and materials costs.

Santos is so good at what he does that Caterpillar has hired him to make sure its heavy equipment is not only ergonomic but easy to service.

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