Building on recent work on body shape modeling and using Kinect as a body scanner, I presented a paper at the 2014 HFES conference in Chicago on work with Siemens on generating subject-specific Jack models. In May, we presented work at the 2014 DHM conference on the implementation in Jack of standing male and female statistical body shape models (SBSM). For some applications, it is useful to create a Jack manikin of a particular individual, for example, a subject in a laboratory study. Normally we would take a set of a dozen or so standard anthropometric measures and type them into Jack to scale a custom figure. That figure will have roughly the right size, but often the shape is quite unlike the individual. In the current work, we find the set of principal component scores in our male or female shape model that produces the body shape most closely matching the data from a snapshot taken with the Kinect sensor.We then pass those PC scores to Jack to obtain a figure with very similar size and shape. The paper shows quantitative comparisons for four women scanned with the Kinect system. In future work, we'll apply the new Kinect 2 sensor, which promises greater accuracy, and relax the current restrictions on scanning posture.
October 2014
Fast Generation of Subject-Specific Models for Ergonomics Research
