Human Body Shape
Major effort to create large, public repository of 3-d human body shape underway at UMTRI
UMTRI Experts Lead Major Data Gathering Effort – 3D Human Body Shapes
UMTRI has been a leader in human measurement since the early 1970s. Researchers in the Biosciences Group have conducted dozens of large-scale studies of youth and adults, measuring body dimensions, strength, and posture in a wide range of conditions. The results of these studies are used globally in the design of an enormous range of products, including clothing, protective equipment, and, of course, vehicles of all kinds. The Biosciences Group has developed design models that enable transportation safety engineers to predict the effects of design changes on safety outcomes as well as subjective assessments of comfort and accommodation. These findings have been used to improve child restraints, vehicle ingress/egress, headroom, seat design, and driver workstation layout.
Historically, body measurement has focused on “one-dimensional (1D)” measures, such as standing height and waist circumference, that can be obtained with simple manual instruments. This type of data has been used to inform critical areas of health and safety research, including the development of physical growth curves and transportation safety standards. One of the most used 1D datasets was gathered by UMTRI researchers in the 1970s. However, these data are no longer representative of today’s US population, and the lack of three-dimensional (3D) information makes it difficult to apply the data in modern computer-aided design environments.
Biosciences researchers are embarking on a major effort to create a new public repository of 3D human body shapes, building on UMTRI’s current data presented at HumanShape.org. State-of-the-art measurement and analysis methods developed at UMTRI will enable complete, detailed body shapes to be generated that are representative of the population and yet completely anonymized to respect privacy and confidentiality. The data will include measures of strength and body composition to support health-related research. The outcomes from this project will be publicly available to allow researchers and product developers to create the next generation of safe, comfortable, and accommodating research equipment and products.
UMTRI’s research in the area of three-dimensional anthropometry has been supported by a wide range of organizations, including the U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, Ford Motor Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, and Reality Labs Research, a division of Meta.
Additional Information and website: www.humanshape.org
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