From anthropometric measurements to three-dimensional shape

Abstract

Functional clothing encompasses a wide range of apparels such as protective equipments, functional garments and fire-retardant clothing. Depending on the application, they must adapt to the shape of the human body, should not interfere with the body motion and should isolate the body from a potentially hazardous environment. In order to achieve these objectives, it is imperative to characterize a body or a body part with the most representative measurements and to understand their interrelationships. More recently, it has been possible to acquire the three-dimensional shape of the human body with full body scanners. Such a three-dimensional shape is of course highly desirable for functional clothing, because it contains detailed information about the whole shape; for instance, a protective mask is most likely to be efficient if the shape around the mouth is known precisely. Consequently, it is essential to be able to analyze and compare these shapes and to understand their relations with traditional anthropometric measurements which are still widely used by the apparel industry. This paper describes our results when analyzing an anthropometric database, using both anthropometric measures and 3D data. Our results indicate that these two sets of data offer complimentary perspectives of the human body and it's measurements, in terms of the resultant sets of clusters and associated archetypes. Through combining these complimentary perspectives, the goal of designing well-fitting functional apparel may be realized.