• Project number: F 2446
• Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
• Status: Ongoing Project
• Planned end: 2024-12-31

Description:

Human-centered design for safe, healthy and competitive products and workplaces require representative anthropometric data sets (the dimensions and measurements of the human body) for the selected user population. For the prospective planning of such scenarios, Digital Human Modeling Systems are increasingly used to account for individual characteristics of the future employee in early stages of the design process.  For an accurate computer-based visualisation and simulation of humans in a virtual (working) environment, an exceptionally detailed knowledge of human characteristics is necessary.

This project aims to collect, process and provide current anthropometric data of employees in Germany. To this end, a methodology will be developed to collect the data using 3D body scans, and to supplement and weight the data with additional sources to keep it up to date.

Providing the data while maintaining the complete anonymity of the surveyed persons poses a challenge here. Therefore, during the preparation, an algorithm based virtual synthesis of the original data set will be created. A previous BAuA project (F 2396 "Digital Ergonomics: Virtual anthropometry for safe and ergonomic product and work system design") already provided the required methods. Statistically, the data set created artificially on the computer is almost identical to the original data set, but can be used and published without privacy concerns.

The calculation methods are very complex and challenging to work with. Therefore, the project aims to foster the access to these data sets. Thereby, small, medium and large enterprises should be enabled to recognize ergonomic human requirements with higher level of detail, during both future product development processes and the design of work systems.