3-D body scanners capture shape and size of children

Researchers at Aston University (Birmingham, UK) are working with major high street retailers in the UK in a project that uses 3-D body scanners to help the retailers understand the size and shape of boys and girls in different age groups.

The Shape GB part public-funded study involving universities, retailers and specialists in 3-D measurement announced key findings from the first phase of their work in April 2011, highlighting changes in children since 1978 and how body shape has changed since then.

The sponsoring retailers, Next, Monsoon, Shop Direct and George at ASDA have started to improve and upgrade their own measurements using the data from Phase 1, which measured children aged between 4 and 17.

The next phase of Shape GB -- the measurement of babies and toddlers -- is the first comprehensive measurement for over 30 years and has been sponsored by M&S and Tesco.

Boys and girls aged 0-4 years old will be measured across England, Scotland and Wales, to obtain a representative sample of Great Britain. Over 20,000 manual measurements will be collected for Phase 2, which will provide data on over 600 babies and toddlers.

"Body shapes of young children change very quickly as they grow, and so leg length, chest width and the combination of numerous measurements can offer insight into how clothes can be manufactured more accurately," says Richard Barnes, the Managing Director of Select Research (Worcester, UK) -- one of the UK’s leading market research companies -- and Project Director for Shape GB.

-- by Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design