ACE: The Automotive Comfort Evaluation manikin

Meet ACE, the newest member of our product family for vehicle cabin comfort testing.

One of our most exciting projects in 2025 is the development of a next-generation manikin we’ve affectionately named ACE, the Automotive Comfort Evaluation manikin. Over the past 21 years, we’ve built, delivered, and helped install dozens of HVAC manakins around the world. Over that time, we’ve learned a lot about what our customers want—and don’t want—from a vehicle manikin. We’re now applying our extensive experience, plus road-tested tech from our sensor and thermal manikin lines, to the design and construction of a new automotive-focused manikin. ACE stands alone as a precision instrument for vehicle development and validation testing in modern and thermally complex vehicle cabins.

Check back here regularly for updates on new features being incorporated into ACE’s design.

What makes ACE the tool of choice for vehicle testing?

The most realistic system you can use to test a vehicle for occupant thermal comfort is of course, an actual occupant. But human testing is difficult, expensive, subjective, and limited by the actual conditions a person can withstand. You don’t ask your human subjects to stand waiting in a -20 °C chamber for two hours while you work out late-breaking technical issues with your vehicle or wind tunnel. ACE; however, will wait patiently and not complain. When you use an appropriate manikin instrument, you have more flexibility in test protocol and timing versus human subjects.

ACE is precision-engineered to address key challenges for vehicle testing, specifically:


Seated manikin form

Our existing HVAC manikin system design is based on a generalized standing manikin body shape. But as we all know, passengers sit in cars, they don’t stand. ACE is designed based on a seated morphology, derived based on research and CAD models from University of Michigan (Reed et. al 2002). A more realistic manikin fit in the vehicle results in better representation of convective flow, radiant view factors, and seat interface contact.

Optimized for handling

ACE is lighter weight than his cousin the HVAC Manikin, and can be carried and loaded in a vehicle by a single person. If vehicle loading is space-constrained, ACE can be separated with quick disconnects at the waist, the neck, or both if he really needs to be squeezed into a tight space.

Easily poseable

With friction pivot or ball joints between all key body segments, one can consistently set ACE’s posture to mimic a driver or occupant. Just push and pull on his limbs to the desired location, and they will stay put. Quick and easy. ACE is so evolved that he even has opposable thumbs, which can be adjusted to clamp down on steering wheels over a wide range of diameters and grip sizes.

Modular sensors

But what about the measurements? That’s where ACE really stands—well, technically sits—above. The manikin can be fitted with two types of modular sensors: Environment and Surface.

  • Environment Sensor Modules: ACE has 46 standard Environment Modules which report air temperature, windspeed, relative humidity, local radiant wall temperature, and solar heat flux. This set of measurements can be integrated to predict total heat loss, or evaluated individually to quantify the effects of HVAC design, glazing, radiant heating panels, or other environment-based factors.
  • Surface Sensor Modules: For body areas in contact with conductive heating/cooling components, specifically seat and steering wheel, ACE is fitted with 10 Surface Modules.  The Surface Modules measure skin surface temperature and heat flux in real time, fully characterizing the transient and steady state heat transfer via conduction.

Integrated human model

What really brings ACE to life is the integrated human physiology and comfort model. Based on extensive research by ThermoAnalytics, ACE’s ManikinPC coupled software reads in all of his sensors, Environment and Surface, and applies them as boundary conditions to a sophisticated human thermophysiology model. This turns a large sensor dataset into a real-time simulated human instrument.

Multiple comfort metrics

Built into ACE’s ThermDAC software are comfort metrics for every need. This includes environment-based metrics PMV and PPD, and physiology-based metrics Berkeley Sensation and Comfort and DTS (Dynamic Thermal Sensation). EHT is also computed for each of the 46 manikin regions. All these metrics are computed in real-time, displayed, graphed, and logged to a data file.

ACE on the road

Interested in seeing a demonstration of ACE? Come visit us at the Thermetrics booth at one of the following conferences! If you’d like to pre-schedule some time to chat, please reach out: [email protected].