A new application of laser shadowgraphy in automotive design and driver's ergonomics investigation is described. The technique is based on generating a characterizing plot for the vehicle's Field of View (FOV). This plot is obtained by projecting a high divergence laser beam from the driver's eyes cyclopean point, on a cylindrical screen installed around the tested vehicle. The resultant shadow-gram is photographed on several shots by a narrow field camera to form a complete panoramic seen for the screen. The panorama is then printed as a plane sheet FOV plot. The obtained plot is used to measure and to analyse the areal visual field, the eye and nick movement ranges in correlation with FOV, the horizontal visual blind zones, the visual maximum vertical angle and other related ergonomic parameters. This work enable comparative FOV testing for many candidate cars to ease the evaluation of the automotive interior design from the ergonomics point of view, and helps car designers to enhance the preventive safety and ergonomics of their designs.

In this work a laser shadowgraphy technique designed to test and enhance the automotive visual ergonomics is described. An experimental setup is used to test the field of view (FOV) of three sample cars through equi-radial laser beam shadowgraphy from driver's cyclopean eye position. A resulting shadowgraph is analyzed to retrieve ergonomic drawbacks of each sample design. this technique we helps in the design of safer cars and also can be used to differentiate between several competitive cars from the same class whenever on ergonomic bases to lower collision probability due to bad designed driver's FOV. A complete modeling of experimental parameters is inclusive.