How Gaming Tech Is Making Safer Cars If you’re anything other
than a mid-sized adult male or a small, lightweight adult woman,
beware. Your senior citizen ribs, massive toddler head, or full-
gear, military uniformed body has never been crash tested. “With
33,000 people in the U.S. dying last year in collisions, there’s
a disconnect between crash test results and what underserved
people are experiencing in accidents,” says Matt Reed, Head of
the Biosciences Group at the University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). To back up his talk,
Reed and his team of researchers are employing unlikely tools. A
$ 220 dollar scanning device, designed to record depth
information and commonly used by videogame creators, is
capturing body shapes in real time, allowing UMTRI to build
virtual humans for vehicle assessment. “For decades, car
companies have been able to test engines and [inanimate]
objects. Our work is making body shape and posture of vehicle
occupants more realistic,” says Reed. In addition t