A low-cost test rig for impact experiments on a dummy head

Abstract Anthropomorphic test dummies are commonly used to evaluate the potential harm to humans due to dangerous scenarios, such as that due to car accidents. Furthermore, they have been used in sports to evaluate the efficacy of protective gears in mitigating harm due to impacts. Recently, they have been considered in industrial and collaborative robotics to assess risks due interactions between a human and a robot. In this article, we describe the development of a low-cost dummy head impact rig. The motivation behind this project is to quantify the potential harm to a child’s head due to impacts with a small robotic toy. Three severity indices can be estimated, namely, Head Acceleration Criterion (HIC), 3 ms criterion, and peak head acceleration. Furthermore, the artificial skin of the dummy head can be used to assess the potential for tissue injuries. 3D-printed parts were used to develop the head. A tri-axial accelerometer embedded inside the head was used to measure the changes in accelerations. The developed head was placed inside a dedicated experimental bench. A data acquisition card that is connected to a computer system was used to acquire the raw data and then store it. A script was used to postprocess the stored data for the three severity indices. A video camera recording in slow-motion was used to record the impacts. The calculation of the impact velocities was based on the analysis of the video recordings using an open-source software. The developed experimental setup was validated by producing comparable results to that of relevant previous studies.