Image capture technology behind the movie Avatar will be used by Ford engineers to create more comfortable cars.

Ford engineers are using image capture technology to create cars more comfortable and more pleasant while driving. This technology was used to create movies like Avatar, Lord of the Rings or Shrek, and Ford is the only car manufacturer that uses this system.

“Like in the movies we apply humans a large number of sensors in order to understand the interaction between man and vehicle,” said Gary Strumolo, manager of Ford. “After data is collected, we create virtual people who are used to realize a large number of tests that will help us understand how people of different body dimensions  interact with different types of machines. It is an effective way to create future cars, the Ford official completed.

System used by U.S. manufacturer called Human Occupant Package Simulator (HOPS) and software for image capture combined with a particular test vehicle. “The comfort or discomfort are inherently subjective measures,” said Nanxin Wang, head of Ford Engineering. “A car can be comfortable for some while others may find the opposite. Our challenge is to find the reason why people feel good or not in the car and change their design” completed Nanxin Wang.

“Before we have HOPS system, the only way we could evaluate the design of cars was to ask people to get into it and tell us how they feel. This was too much time consuming. Now we can group these subjective data with objective measurements taken using the HOPS ” concluded Nanxin Wang.