3DBODY.TECH 2022 - Paper 22.07

D. Oehlschlaeger et al., "Testing a Smartphone Application for the Optimisation of Organisational Outfitting Procedures for Protective Clothing", Proc. of 3DBODY.TECH 2022 - 13th Int. Conf. and Exh. on 3D Body Scanning and Processing Technologies, Lugano, Switzerland, 25-26 Oct. 2022, #07, https://doi.org/10.15221/22.07.

Title:

Testing a Smartphone Application for the Optimisation of Organisational Outfitting Procedures for Protective Clothing

Authors:

Dominik OEHLSCHLAEGER 1, Marina WEISSE 2, Cindy BAGGE 2, Carsten ZIMMERMANN 2, Andreas H. GLAS 1, Jens HOLTMANNSPOETTER 2, Michael ESSIG 1

1 Bundeswehr University Munich, Neubiberg, Germany;
2 Bundeswehr Research Institute for Materials, Fuels and Lubricants, Erding, Germany

Abstract:

Allocating protective clothing to personnel of emergency service organisations requires a substantial amount of time and effort. This makes these processes costly and laborious. Data-driven outfitting bears the potential to increase efficiency both economically and ecologically. Therefore, this study explores a smartphone application’s feasibility to enable virtual human-product matchmaking within the context of organisational outfitting procedures. This is achieved by testing the application’s ability to capture individual body data of users and associate these with product dimensions.
The application’s performance is evaluated by contrasting the accuracy of its results with those of a laser-based 3D body scanner as well as through physical inspection of results. For this purpose, an experiment has been conducted in which 63 members of the German Armed Forces were given the task to scan themselves via a smartphone application. Obtained information was transferred to a mock-up online shop where a pretrained algorithm automatically matched various body dimensions to the optimal sizes of ten different clothing products. Thereafter, participants were given the selected products for physical trial fitting. The fit of each solitary product and the products' combinability were subjectively evaluated by the participants and objectively by a clothing technician and a tailor.
Findings show that the smartphone application is feasible to enable the outfitting procedure's digitisation, although body data captured by the smartphone application was of lower accuracy than data gathered by the laser-based 3D body scanner. Furthermore, the experiment's findings helped to uncover issues of incumbent product dimensions and size ranges as well as substantiated the importance of gender-specific clothing since the usage of unisex products led to poor results for the female subpopulation. For the male subpopulation, 86 per cent of products were optimally allocated, the wrong size was chosen in 12 per cent of cases, and in two per cent of cases the system failed to select any product at all. By analysing these aspects, the findings shed more light on technical issues such as measuring errors or flaws of the allocation algorithm.
The study evinces current potentials and troubles of both the smartphone application and the digital outfitting system which offer avenues for future research. Insights into the potential of smartphone applications are valuable for all organisations that face the issue of economic and ecological inefficiencies of human-product matchmaking regardless if they operate in an intraorganisational, a business-to-business, or a business-to-customer context. This was an early approach to employ smartphone-based technology in intraorganisational product-human matchmaking procedures for protective clothing. Although improvements are still possible from a technical point of view, the findings suggest that smartphone-based body scanning will have a key impact on industry.

Keywords:

3D Body Scanning; Smartphone; Outfitting; Protective Clothing; Experiment

Details:

Full paper: 2207oehlschlaeger.pdf
Proceedings: 3DBODY.TECH 2022, 25-26 Oct. 2022, Lugano, Switzerland
Paper id#: 07
DOI: 10.15221/22.07
Presentation video: 3DBodyTech2022_07_oehlschlaeger.mp4

Copyright notice

© Hometrica Consulting - Dr. Nicola D'Apuzzo, Switzerland, hometrica.ch.
Reproduction of the proceedings or any parts thereof (excluding short quotations for the use in the preparation of reviews and technical and scientific papers) may be made only after obtaining the specific approval of the publisher. The papers appearing in the proceedings reflect the author's opinions. Their inclusion in these publications does not necessary constitute endorsement by the editor or by the publisher. Authors retain all rights to individual papers.


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