Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 8.8
Whole body scanning
equipment. Courtesy of Cyberware,
Monterey, CA.
Laser scanning provides detail measures about the surface shape as well as
threedimensional locations of measures relative to each other. The measures are easy to
transfer to computer-aided design models. It will take some time until this methodology
makes an impact on industry. Other initiatives of whole-body measurement have been
undertaken, for example by Wang et al., which may be cheaper than CAESAR. While
these technologies are being tested out and further improved, we can also continue to use
traditional measures.
The design of workstations is fairly simple and does not require any elaborate
measurements. As illustrated above, a standing work station for assembly work can be
designed using two to three measures, such as standing elbow height, arm reach, and eye
height. For a sitting work station, measures of popliteal height, sitting elbow height, eye
height, and thigh clearance are important. These are also the measures that are used in
designing adjustable furniture. Other measures such as shoulder breath and buttock
breadth do not affect adjustability design, since a chair must be made wide enough to
accommodate all users. Unlike clothes which must fit the user, it does not matter if the
backseat is a bit too large.
One important drawback of traditional measures is the errors which are obtained when
different body measures are added. For example, to design of a heightadjustable table for
5th percentile to 95th percentile users two measures the human body must be added—
popliteal height and sitting elbow height. Let's examine the case of the 5th percentile
users—the 95th percentile would be similar. This leads to errors, since no user is 5th
