Extraction of sliding collision area of knee-form for automobile safety inspections

Abstract

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe defines a safety regulation based on the possible collision between the driver’s knee and an automobile’s interior parts. The “knee-form” apparatus is used to evaluate compliance with this regulation. Current software for analyzing possible collisions of the knee-form is not applicable to the part whose surface is vertical and near parallel to the knee-form approaching direction. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm named “push-and-slide” for extracting the knee-form colliding area on the console part and door panel. In the first step of the algorithm, the target surface of the part is transformed to gridlike points in a high resolution. The knee-form models in various positions and orientations are prepared in the second step. Each knee-form model is pushed to the grid-like points. The model is then moved along the part surface to detect possible collisions between the knee-form and the grid-like points. An experimental system is developed and some computational experiments are performed.