“We decided to make the software freely available to have more people use it, to further enhance vehicle safety across the entire automotive industry, and to help reduce traffic injuries and fatalities to create a safer society. “It has now become indispensable technology to Toyota’s efforts in developing safety technologies and vehicles. Seigo Kuzumaki, fellow at Advanced R&D and Engineering Company, offered the following comment about free access to THUMS: “Since the very first launch of THUMS in 2000, we’ve been making ongoing improvements and avidly working to better reproduce the human anatomy and expand the variations of models. Making THUMS freely available is expected not only to enable a greater number of people to use it in their vehicle safety research, but to also improve the usability of the software, as users make improvements to the model themselves and share the results with others.

Vehicle safety assessment organizations are also currently considering the use of THUMS for virtual testing in their future assessment plans. It is being used to research and develop many different safety technologies, such as seatbelts, airbags, and vehicle structures that help reduce injury risks in vehicle collisions with pedestrians. THUMS is currently used in vehicle safety research by over 100 vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, universities, research institutions and others, in Japan and overseas. Compared to the physical crash dummies commonly used in vehicle collision tests, THUMS is able to analyze collision-related injuries in more detail, because it precisely models the shapes and durability of human bodies.Ĭonducting simulations on computers also enables repeated analysis of a range of different collision patterns, while it can dramatically reduce development lead times and costs associated with collision testing.

Virtual crash 4