Ford is using the same motion-capture technology used by Hollywood (in films like Avatar) to track human movements inside virtual cars, allowing them to better analyze human motion and design cars around it while avoiding expensive physical prototypes.
“This technology enables us to evaluate many vehicle exterior and interior alternatives in a virtual environment from any location — in the driver’s seat or hundreds of feet away from the vehicle – with animated characters and vehicles,” said Elizabeth Baron, a technical specialist in Virtual Reality and Advanced Visualization at Ford.
One room in the lab projects images onto three walls and the ceiling, producing interiors and exteriors at actual scale. If this technology really makes developing vehicles easier and less expensive, look for Ford to use it even more over the next couple years as it continues its drive to return to profitability by 2011.
