In the sense of portability a scientific approach should show high portability. Therefore, our research covers the various areas of human life. This is especially covered by the cooperation with the specialty division Sports Equipment and Materials.

Research at the Institute of Ergonomics in the sense of the term Micro-Ergonomics deals in particular with the design and evaluation of the interaction between man and technical systems. Particularly in the light of current demographic and economic developments the quality of ergonomic design and the pleasure of using many products is of increasing importantance in a global competition. This fact is true for consumer goods as well as machinery in the production environment. Innovative interaction technologies such as touch control or actuators with force-feedback allows the reshaping of interaction concepts and requires appropriate ergonomics policies for example in the field of usability, to measure ergonomic quality objectively. The powers of the institute cover both anthropometric and cognitive aspects. Our interdisciplinary research approach is in very close cooperation with industrial partners from different domains (aerospace, automotive, work, sport) and involves end users (eg in the Usability Lab of the climate chamber or driving simulator) in order to develop new concepts and tools based on theories and models.

Especially under the circumstances of ageing societies users developed dedicated comfort expectations considering the driver workplace. Therefore the ergonomic layout considering anthropometric requirements will stay a success factor beyond safety and efficiency. One central element is the optimization of reaching and reading conditions for a huge variability of drivers. Another aspect is the reduction of discomfort via the optimization of seating conditions.

Empirically the relevance of pressure distribution especially in the seat surface could be identified as cause for minimum discomfort even for long term driving. This was integrated into the digital human model RAMSIS to enable the engineer to regard anthropometric and comfort requirements in a very early specification phase.

As the evaluation of concepts by subjects is a very time and cost effective procedure of a digital human model is of tremendous relevance. More and more not only anthropometric aspects need be regarded but also cognitive requirements. Therefore current research focuses visual and visu-motoric processes.

Ergonomic evaluation of a product requires building up a physical mock-up or a prototype, having a group of experts or a representative sample of users to test it and to give their discomfort feeling. This is an expensive and time-consuming process. Digital Mock-Ups together with Digital Human Models, are more and more used in the early phase of product design for reducing the product development time and cost.

Digital Human Models, are more and more used in the early phase of product design for reducing the product development time and cost. In order to help the designer to evaluate the future product, the digital human should ideally behave like human beings, not only in terms of anthropometry but also in terms of motion, discomfort perception and work related tissue injury. So the main objective of this research topic is to develop more advanced digital human models for ergonomic research and evaluation including demographic effects.

A second focus is the modeling of human comfort perception and the development of evaluation tools and metrics for seating ergonomics.

The increasing number of sensors in the vehicle enables more and more assistance systems to partially take over the driving task. The growing variety of emerging interfaces overstrains the driver’s mental capacity. Therefore it is reasonable to develop a concept with a single interface. Due to sensoric improvements driver-assistance-systems can take over an increasing amount of the driving task (cf. Adaptive Cruise Control and Lane Keeping Assistance). This is also true for aviation and process control. Future vehicles will be able to perform complex manouvers and get into cooperation with the driver as automated vehicles. The same development can be observed in human-robot interaction and is already available in aviation.

In nearly all domains the dilemma between safety and efficiency has to be resolved. The user should be informed and motivated to act anticipatively to save energy and avoid dangerous situations. The question is how to increase the user experience, avoid information overflow and patronizing effects. This research topic covers questions of suitable HMIs for cooperative human-machine systems and the question how to exchange intentions between the interacting partners. If machines like highly automated vehicles make the step from helpful assistants to cooperative partners, new research tasks arise, but also several well known questions reappear with an even stronger emphasis:

• „What will be the next activity/status of the automated vehicle?“
• „What will be the next activity/status of the cooperating robot?“
• „How foreseeable is human motor behaviour for a cooperative adaptive machine?“
• “To which degree is the cooperative party (human or machine) available regarding hypovigilance, situation awareness, fatigue, error, malfunction, and functional limits?“
• „How will drivers/operators acquire their driving/operating skills in interaction with cooperative control systems and how this relates to their mental representation of the task?”
• “How can be ensured that human-robot interactions will not only work out technically but are also accepted by their users, i. e. human beings feel safe and not negatively affected by the presence of a robot?”

To keep the increasing amount of information in modern vehicles easily accessible and controllable for the driver and also to minimize his mental workload, sophisticated presentation and interaction techniques are of major importance. In the car domain, error-prone situations often occur regarding the human-machine interaction with different in-car applications, as the driver often has a certain mental workload by combining displayed information, interacting with different input devices and transferring it to the reality. Different modalities (handwriting, touch, manual input systems, gaze direction) are investigated under these aspects and their suitability for input. On the information presentation side head up display, contact-analog head up display and haptic feedback are implemented and investigated.

In the production environment the bottleneck in the flexible and efficient usage of robots is the programming expert. Therefore new multimodal paradigms for robot training and programming shall be investigated that allow also casual users to adapt small, lightweight robots to support them in production

The use of visual information displays in vehicles has continually grown in recent years; speech interaction is a great hope for the reduction of driver distraction. The intended purpose of such concepts is increased convenience and operating safety. However, it is still unknown, whether new additional systems produce information overload in the driver, thus having negative effects on driving safety. Therefore, it is necessary to provide developers with methods for the evaluation of design concepts already in early stages.

The institute researches the potential of pupil dilation measurement and peripheral detection paradigms for the evaluation of users' mental workload in different interaction conditions. It is a clear research goal to develop and calibrate workload indices for cognitive workload suitable for continuous measurement during high assistance/automation and multimodal interaction.

The challenge to realize lightweight equipment but optimized with respect to energy transfer is part of this research topic. It had been started with optimizing the four seater bob sledge and is now focusing on new materials for bicycles. As material aspects can not be dealed separately from human performance the center of bike expertise (bcc) at Technische Universität München (TUM) is dealing with all kinds of questions around the bicycle and cycling. The fields of research range from physiology to biomechanics and from design optimization to innovative compound materials and their non destructive inspection.

The laboratory of TUM bcc is well equipped with different test facilities for static and dynamic frame and component testing. Its bicycle frame test rig with five independent loading axes for endurance testing is a unique piece of engineering and the heart of the laboratory. Several measuring bikes for field tests allow determination not only of the loads between the cyclist and the bike but also of stress and strain at critical locations of the frame.

This research branch focuses on the effect of sport equipment to the athletes’ performance. In the majority of the cases the equipment’s design has to be optimized in order to reduce metabolic energy during application and thus to improve the efficiency of motion. This task needs a basic understanding of human motion biomechanics, of individual power levels, metabolic energy production issues and the specific demands of the different kinds of sports. As competitive sports is the main target of this research, the German Federal Institute for Sports Science (BISp) is primarily funding this branch of our research.

Personel safety equipment eather worn by the athlete or located between the human and the environment is the traditional topic for sports engineering. A multitude of approaches towards reduced injury risk is being followed in our research. For ethic reasons modeling and simulation are the basic access methods of our research. Complex multi-body models of the human foot, of the ankle and the knee joint, the neck-head system and the entire arm including the hand have been developed. Visco-elastic properties and the soft tissue behavior of the ligaments, cartilage and tendons are considered in these models as well as the corresponding muscles. Bone geometry is taken from computer tomography data. Major care is taken in the validation of our models by comparing simulation results to experiments (specimen tests in cooperation with faculty of medicine).

The fourth major research topic deals with (dis)comfort and health questions related to sports technology. Four categories are treated within this research topic:

• the Apparel and garment research (here we look at micro climate and moisture handling of sports textiles),
• the evaluation of fitness- and health devices,
• the quantification of functionality of sporting goods, and
• the sustainability and CO2-footprint of sporting goods.

The principal method to approach are surveys which are – wherever possible – supported by objective measurements (i.e. core temperature, blood lactate, oxygen consumption and thermography). The Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology has supported a four year research with the target to develop scientifically based functionality tests of sports equipment. Basing on the results of this project, we are currently conducting tests in the field and in the climate chamber to better understand the complex interaction of different layers and membrane structure of outdoor garment.