About

VIRTUAL, a 4-year project led by The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), started on 1 June, 2018.

Within this project Open Source Human Body Models of both men and women will be made available in a format that is scalable to represent different ages and sizes of car occupants, vulnerable road users, and users of public transport. The project will have a long-term impact through providing better evaluation tools (including cost-benefit). This enables the European vehicle industry to produce more efficient safety systems and consequently reduce the injuries and fatalities, and thus reduce the societal loss from traffic accidents. Furthermore, improvements in Human Body Models technology will allow for faster development strategies and reduce physical testing requirements that create extra material processing and energy cost; reducing physical prototyping will thus also benefit the environment. Standardised VT protocols, using open source tools, will facilitate transparent and fair comparison of integrated vehicle safety systems for all vehicle manufacturers. VIRTUAL will bridge the gap between virtual testing using HBMs and physical testing with mechanical dummies for safety assessment of new vehicles and products.
Major achievements are expected with respect to HBM’s in VT