I attended theBiomechanics and Engineering Anthropometry (BEAM) 2026 meeting in Dayton, Ohio, this week. This was the 2nd of what I hope will be a long-running meeting series hosted by our colleagues at the Accommodation Research Lab that brings together a communit of biomechanics and applied anthropometry researchers and practitioners focused on defense-related applications. Due to the ongoing chaos in DC, many of our government colleagues were unable to attend, but we had good representation from USAF, CAF, contractors, and academia. I gave an overview talk entitled "Escaping the Bottleneck" aimed at highlighting how better software enables us to actually use our 3D body shape data, rather than either extracting 1D dimensions for univariate analyses or limiting 3D analyses to a few extreme cases. I gave a few exampes of how the HumanShape app enables rapid analyses that previously would have taken weeks or perhaps not even have been attempted.
It's exciting to see many lines of research coming together to address the need to finally be able to use ALL of our 3D data. Get in touch with me if you'd like to see the future of product design for human accommodation and fit.
