Anthropometric Shape Analysis Strategy for Design of Personalwear

The diversity of morphologies may be a source of annoyance to the designer of personal equipment. For those involved in design problems, the user population seems to have considerable variability in the size and shape of body parts. However, traditionally available anthropometric data provides only the independent value for each measurement with no information on the shapes of the contours and curvatures. This type of data appears to be insufficient for the design of personal equipment such as shoes, helmets, or a guard for a specific body part. Therefore, interfacing any human body part and equipment should begin with the objective knowledge of the full range of body sizes and shapes. The size variability can be tackled by developing fitting schemes by covering segments of a multivariate normal population. The main difficulty is apprehending the anatomical shapes and their variation relative to three dimensional space. Further, for offering the proper fit, it becomes imperative that variability in such anatomical shapes be incorporated in the design. This paper describes the shape analysis strategy which should be useful in approximating non-linear dimensions of human body part for design. The method is illustrated by selecting the curvatures along a foot outline. The curvatures are defined as a set of discrete points and then analyzed by statistical and numerical methods for arriving at an optimized shape. The shape differences and similarities within and between the two methods are examined graphically and discussed. Results show that the technique of integrating the fitting scheme and anatomical shape approximation describes the human body shapes in geometric terms with moderate accuracy.