3D DIGITAL HUMAN BODY MODELING FOR E-COMMERCE

Wen-Ko Chiou, Tyan-Yu Wu, and Thu-Hua Liu

Department of Industrial Design, College of Management, Chang Gung University
259 Wen-Hua 1st Road, Kwei-Shan, Tao-Yuan 333, Taiwan
TEL:+886-3-3283016 ext.5422

ABSTRACT
The 3D Electronic Commerce project concerns the new, major commercial opportunities created by 3D digital body
modeling. These opportunities arise from 3D optical whole body scanners capable of rapidly capturing accurate data
on human body size and shape, which are now beginning to appear on the market. However, 3D applications
software is still embryonic. Once sophisticated software is developed these scanners will have a major impact on
retailing, 3D design and manufacture, as well as on health and medicine. The Center for 3D Electronic Commerce
focuses on three principal work packages: The Sizing Survey, Custom Clothing and Health Service, and Virtual
Shopping Service.
Keywords: human modeling, electronic commerce, data base management system

INTRODUCTION
Surface anthropometry is the detailed measurement of the outer surface of the human body. These technologies can
capture hundreds of thousands of points in three-dimensions (3D) on the human body surface in a few seconds. This
capability has many advantages [2] over the old system of measurement using tape measures, anthropometers (a
type of measuring ruler), and other similar instruments. Some key advantages include: (a) It reduces the guesswork
about the body surface, which makes it much easier to use in computer-aided design (CAD) and rapid prototyping;
(b) It alleviates the dependency of the measurements on the subject’s positioning when measured, allowing the
extraction of an almost infinite number and variety of measurements long after the subject has moved on; (c) It
provides the first viable method for capturing the human in their clothing, equipment, and workspace, and in
realistic postures; (d) Being a non-contact system it reduces measuring differences between measurers making data
sets collected by different groups more comparable.
Nowadays, laser technology has revolutionized the traditional collection and application of anthropometric data.
3D digitized data can easily be collected in a few seconds through a 3D scanner and accessed immediately from
anywhere in the world through the internet. This technology has pushed anthropometric technology towards a
digitalized environment, which allows researchers to conveniently access and study the ergonomic data. Through
digitized data management, this new technology can bridge many professional disciplines such as medicine, human
factors, CAD/CAM, reverse engineering, entertainment applications, and e-commerce applications.
It is faster, less expensive, and provides details about the surface shape as well as 3D locations of measures relative
to each other. An anthropometric database involves the measurement of human physical dimensions on a
comparative basis. The data collection methods can be standardized and documented so that the database can be
consistently expanded and updated. Until now, most anthropometric databases have not dealt effectively with 3D
measurements; most only used traditional methods of measurement. Establishing a national 3D anthropometric
database for our nation is now undoubtedly a necessity, since most anthropometric data focus on Caucasians not
Asians.

DATA BASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The concept of data management is based on the knowledge-based approach to developing data banks which allow
researchers, through websites all over the world, to access data bank and to easily manipulate data according to their
individual purpose. In order to accomplish this goal, the challenge is to design accessing interface and website
structures in order to fulfill different requirements.
In this data bank, three different levels of data information are defined for the Data Base Management System
(DBMS). These three levels are indicated as raw data, business, and presentation [3]. The first level is raw data,
which is stored as the data base format. The raw data table is directly linked to the digitized human model, hence,
all raw data can refer to a position on the human model. This raw data, through an additional programming process
are available for the applications, such as statistical data bases. The second level is business application. It shows
the information-based data base, which have been sorted upon sizing, mapping, mining etc., for individual
application. The information-based results are presented in table format or as a digitized human model, depending
on the needs of applicants. The information-based data bank allows users to interact with it or to do statistical
analysis by customizing the software. The third level is the presentation. It shows the knowledge-based
information in the website, which are the results of the research, member interaction and design applications.
These three levels of information are available for individual acquirement through the Internet.
To address security concerns, authority to access is reviewed and assigned case by case. For instance, only doctors
in Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH) are allowed to access both the medical and health records and the 3-D
data bank. Taking advantage of Internet and Intranet, the data linkage has opened broad opportunities for research
in many fields such as clinical medicine, health promotion and management, as well as product development and
design disciplines in the future.
The DBMS is designed to bridge the gap between research and various applications, including medical research,
academic research, product development, and industrial applications [1]. The idea of being useful in a broad
variety of applications has led to an international vision for the DBMS, while local applications have been processed
in medical fields successfully. The basic concept of DBMS is based on the users’ psychological needs and
operational behavior, and on the knowledge-based contents, which are associated with the interface design of
Internet technology.
The construction of the core facility, which contains four building blocks, includes the following steps: (a) Build and
integrate the scanning facilities into a 3-D body scanner; (b) Establish a native (Taiwanese) 3-D body
anthropometric data bank; (c) Design and implement an anthropometric DBMS; (4) Construct the DBMS website
for sharing the civilian Taiwanese surface anthropometry resource to support the human body geometric data related
e-commence activities. In other words, the structure of this system includes four sub-systems: 3D Whole Body
Scanner System, 3D Human Model Process System, 3D Human Model Data Bank System, and Remote Site Access
System. Figure 1 shows the overall structure of this DBMS system.
The 3D Whole Body Scanner System was built mainly for collecting 3D Human Model and raw data based
information. The 3D Human Model Process System was developed to process raw data, and to process 3D Human
Model, in order to fulfill data bank needs, which must store a different types of data information for different
applications for future research. The 3D Human Model Data Bank System was developed to store 3D human
model and data files, and involved the development of both hardware and software. In the future, more advance
features will be added to this system, such as establishing human surface modeling structures, human model analysis,
and searching for specified features of human models. The Remote Site Access System was developed to serve
remote site users through Internet technology. This system can offer distant users as much information as local
users can reach. These functions include the inquiry of texts, data, 3D human model, literature reviews,
applications and other related information.

Health Records Remote Site CGU

3D Human Model
in CGMH Access System.
Process System
3D Whole Body 3D Human Model
Scanner System. Data Bank System.

Figure 1: The infrastructure of 3D human body modeling processing system.

APPLICATION AND RESEARCH PLAN

To realize the potential of 3D human body DBMS much is being done. In particular, industry requires: (a) Fully
automatic, reliable and accurate measuring and analysis systems capable of matching existing commercial
hand-measuring standards; (b) Access to a national database of up-to-date and continuously updated information on
human body size and shape, and to ways of modeling the body so as to capture appropriate characteristics and
abstractions of the data; (c) The underlying models of the 3D body, fabric and clothing to provide suitably realistic
and believable behavior for visualization of and analysis of fit; (d) The software interfaces and tools to enable such
data, models and systems to be used by industrial practitioners within key business areas such as custom clothing
and Internet shopping; (e) Operational demonstrator systems.
Additionally, in order fully to exploit this technology in a distributed manner over the Internet - for example, in new
ways of interactive design and manufacturing, or to launch innovative ways of advertising and retailing - industry
needs to have confidence that: (a) Levels of security and confidentiality can be provided that are capable of
protecting their commercial interests and the privacy of their customers; (b) Use of such systems will be
commercially and socially acceptable.
The Center for 3D Electronic Commerce focuses on three principal work packages: The Sizing Survey, Custom
Clothing and Health Service, and Virtual Shopping Service. The Center for 3D Electronic Commerce brings
together major Taiwan industries and healthcare institutions in this collaborative research project. The research is
organized around three centers of national expertise, namely National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Industrial
Technology Research Institute (ITRI), and Chang Gung University (CGU), all coordinated centrally by CGU.

Sizing Survey The Sizing Survey aims to collect whole body data and automate sizing and analysis software
developed within the project. There is no limit on future ways of analyzing the body images by those within the
Consortium, other industries and research.
The Center for 3D Electronic Commerce has prepared the technology and logistics infrastructure for the survey,
consisting of the logistics plans, technology and survey proofing reports, software (for sizing, visualization and
shape analysis) and the national database. As far as possible this software aims to be scanner independent, with
participating companies contributing the use of previously acquired scanner hardware. ITRI is developing the
visualization and shape analysis software. CGU has prepared the logistics plan and organized an industry-agreed
survey of 200 people. CGMH is funding and is due to conduct national sizing surveys of 12,000, each of women,
men and children.
In the national surveys, stratified sampling, as in the CAESAR project, is essential in order to obtain reliable
statistics on different population groups, for example, by sex, age, occupation, family income, etc., but necessarily
leads to very large surveys, usually beyond the resources of any one single organization. Nevertheless, steps have
been taken to begin collecting data on some easily identifiable population groups. For example, the silhouettes of
approximately 2,000 female subjects have already been scanned at NTHU for a number of clothing retailers and
CGMH have hand-measured 500 pregnant women. In addition, the collection of whole body 3D data is underway at
CGMH, together with the development of prototype software tools to automatically process and analyze the data.

Custom Clothing and Health

In manufacturing, up-to-date statistical anthropometric data may be exploited in conventional processes to improve
products as soon as it becomes available, but there are two more significant ways in which such data may be
exploited. Firstly, appropriately detailed 3D body models based on real data can be used at an early stage in the
design process, for clothing design and medical application, or for specialist applications, as in aerospace and
defense. Secondly, data on particular individuals can be used to develop personal customized products. To a certain
extent, both are incremental on current trends, involving, for example, the use of computerized 3D body models in
the automobile industry and the customization of specialized clothing in aerospace, or of cars in the highest echelons
of motor racing. This DBMS is designed to provide effective information for medical/health management and
design-related applications, research, and practice.

Virtual Shopping
3D electronic retailing will have perhaps the biggest impact on society. It is easy to imagine many, radical
applications in retailing, just as there are almost limitless possibilities for the use of this technology in films,
entertainment, sport and leisure. However, the introduction of a new technology with a very different interface to the
user is fraught with many dangers, and can easily fail for commercial and sociological reasons, even if the
underlying technical achievements are sound. The challenge therefore is to introduce new, personalized approaches
to retailing – for example, via the use of electronic scanners in-store, building customer databases, introduction of
smart cards, interactive media, interactive catalogues and virtual environments - in a way that builds commercial
confidence and creates new market opportunities.
The third project focuses on 3D electronic retailing using CGMH funding to develop demonstrators for virtual
shopping via interactive television, electronic kiosks and Web-based PCs. A garment image can be mapped onto a
customer's image to allow 3D visualization of the product, and enable accurate sizing information to be transmitted
to the supplier. This project is led by Chi-Yuan Yu of the E-Center, who is ensuring that the necessary standards for
secure 3D electronic retailing are realized. NTHU are developing the fabric and garment visualization system that
maps product images onto customer images. Freemen and Video networks will develop and test the interactive
television demonstrator, and NCR will develop and test an electronic kiosk demonstrator in a retail environment. Via
a range of interactive media, these applications will put personal shoppers into electronic catalogues, allowing
access to common visualization software and protected body and garment databases of common structure.

Infrastructure Technologies
Linking the three projects (The Sizing Survey, Custom clothing and Health Service, and Virtual Shopping Service),
and providing the cross-theme, are the infrastructure technologies, developed by CGU, NTHU and ITRI.
Data captured from a range of scanners is transformed to a common 3D representation, which is
application-independent and scanner-independent. 2D images will be converted to key scaling factors to ‘inflate’ a
parametric 3D model. This will enable the applications projects proposed here, and future projects, to make use of
data from the national surveys and individually captured scans in a unified way. Automated 3D size and shape
analysis software, based on artificial intelligence techniques, is under development at NTHU. This will be adapted
and refined for particular body types using data sampled from segmented data sets. A common database system has
been designed to store body data in its raw and scanner-independent form. This structure will be used by the three
applications projects to create protected body databases, accessible via secure Internet communication. 3D browsing
techniques will be developed to enable users to search the information across the Internet.

COMMERCIAL BENEFITS
Up-to-date anthropometric data is of great importance to many areas of industry and commerce, as well as to
entertainment and medicine. Commercial examples include 3D custom design of vehicle seats and furniture, sizing,
custom clothing and 3D animation for 'edutainment', games and films. In health, this presents a potential
breakthrough in the non-intrusive measuring of body volume, skin surface area and posture. In this latter area CGU
is working with the CGMH to establish a 3D Center for Medical Applications; initial funding has been awarded by
the Welcome Trust.
The main advantage of optical body scanning is that it provides, for the first time, easily available, detailed,
complete information of human body size and shape in a form that can be stored, manipulated and processed by
computer. Moreover, as noted above, such data can be from population surveys and from specific individuals alike.
A national 3D human body DBMS will be a unique and highly valuable resource for Taiwan industries, healthcare
and research, and one that can be supplemented by future surveys.

CONCLUSION
Anthropometry is the inclusion of data on human body dimensions in the design process, and it can provide us
variety data such as segment lengths, segment mass, volume, weight, density, segment center of mass, range of
motion and strength capabilities. Product designers can get information about the crowd, apply those data to
workplace design, equipment design, hand tool design therefore they can make product more humanity. For doctors,
the website offer patients’ body data to help doctors to recommend them. For researchers, there are reference
resources of the masses to supply their programs. In the future, we expect to provide information to the users via
3D anthropometrical databank to improve people’s living quality. Through the integration of Internet technology
and DBMS, we try to bridge the gap between researches and applications, in terms of medical research and 3D
human model.

REFERENCES
[1]. Fife, D.W., Hardgrave, W.T., & Deutch D.R. Data Base Concept, Cincinnati: Southwestern Publishing, 1986.
[2]. Jones, P.R.M., & Rioux, M. Three-dimensional surface anthropometry: Applications to the human body, Optics
and Lasers in Engineering, 1997, 28, 89-117.
[3]. McFadden, F.R., & Hoffer, J.A. Data Base Management, California: The Benjamin, 1988.