Newswise — If you've been having trouble shopping for clothes that fit well, you're not alone. In developed countries from Australia to Finland, people are getting bigger every year. This poses a problem for designers of everything from clothing to airline seats, who rely on large-scale surveys of people's size measurements to know just how large a medium shirt should be, or how many seats can fit in a plane. But these surveys are expensive and time-consuming, which explains why it's been decades since the last surveys were conducted in the United States and United Kingdom. Now a new generation of automatic digital body scanners can capture hundreds of measurements in seconds, allowing the first new large-scale surveys to be conducted around the world.
This article in the April issue of IEEE Spectrum is written by one of the pioneers of the large-scale survey technology. He explains how 3-D body scanners work, the impact they'll have on everyday lives, and the future of the technology in the health and clothing industries.He also presents some of the key results of the U.K. survey, which tell the story of our changing bodies.
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