Web anthropometry: yesterday, today, tomorrow

Who likes shopping clothes? To sweat in fitting rooms, to shift in underwear in anticipation: “let's try this one again”? Even girls who are unjustly accused of adoring to spin in front of a mirror (this is what they are trying for us), after two hours of transition from the fitting room to the fitting room they lose heart.

As always, when people don’t want to do anything, robots go.

2D fitting rooms will not surprise anyone

Ideas that lead a family tree from the props of street photographers with a hole for poking their heads are distinguished by the variations of overlay objects: a dummy, an image of clothes, your own photo.
How such things work, you can look, for example, at: SHOWROOMS.ru - “a unique service with the ability to try and reserve things in Moscow stores with a discount of up to 30% right on the site.” OnlineDress - "media portal and social network about fashion." This fitting looks funny, but no funnier creepy mannequins in fashion boutiques. I don’t know about you, but on these services I like the “Remove all” buttons most of all.
Virtualization, of course, is minimal. As one familiar major used to say, “automation at the level: the button was pressed — the bag on the back”.
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Kinect does not drive

With the advent of Kinect, the virtual fitting room in offline clothing stores are becoming fashionable.
The same 2D model of the product is superimposed on the image of the buyer. It is difficult to say how much the store benefits from it. Is that - entertainment visitors; for example, you can have fun trying on clothes that are clearly not meant for you.

Some prospects, in the sense of application in online technologies, have Bodyoming's scanner from Bloomingdales. The three-dimensional model of a person obtained in such a scanner can theoretically be used in online stores. But, it is asked, what to do to those to whom scanning is inaccessible? And those whose condition changes with age or even season? And why so complicate if everyone is always on hand to the good old cloth "meter"?

However, the Kinect opportunities attract supporters. For example, the semi-finalist of the Forbes startups competition tells about the technical secrets of his online fitting room using a scanner.

Estonian fitting room

Seriously to destroy the anthropometric barrier in the online clothing trade took in Fits.me.
The team, consisting of specialists from the laboratory of intelligent materials and systems at the University of Tartu, the center of robotics at Tallinn University of Technology, and Human Solutions GmbH, the leading supplier of anthropometric data, developed its own version of a virtual fitting room. For four anthropometric dimensions (height, neck circumference, waist and wrist), the system adjusts the three-dimensional model, which is tried on things in online stores. The fitting room claims to create growth opportunities for e-commerce in the apparel category, which, according to their data, is 7% (or $ 31 billion in the US alone), while the share of computers or books sold online exceeds 50%.

Almost what you need

OptiTex , a serious CAD developer, approached the problem of global anthropometry closely.
Why the service did not capture "all Internet" can be explained only by the fact that the company wants to sell its software to designers and designers of clothing. Well, the range of interests: from games to the aviation industry - can also serve as an explanation.

For the location of designers to the design programs of clothes, many developers are fighting. I haven’t studied this market specifically, but the discovered examples of the choice of computer-aided design of clothes indicate that no CAD system will ever capture the entire market. And online stores and manufacturers do not care about exactly what CAD clothing is designed for. The first would like to reduce the number of returns, and the second - to know how many models to launch in production.

Future service

It remains to take one step to create a global anthropometric service.
Built similarly to the OptiTex model, it should be able to “read” the model image from all CAD formats used in the fashion industry. The client module should be distributed absolutely free. The only thing for which the service will take money is for the summary data on all Internet sites, and the fee for the manufacturer will be more than symbolic compared to the costs of over- or under-production.

The central part of the service should allow anyone who wants to get his (husband, wife, children, neighbor, mistress, etc.) copy for trips to online stores. The level of identification here should be minimal. Maximum - the email address for sending the model code - in case the user does not wish to write the code manually. Identification is required in the online store, but on what model the buyer tried on clothes, no one is interested, except the buyer himself.
The service database will receive data (excluding service data) in the format: | model code | product code | store code | when the user performs an action involving the model in the online store.

Global success in this area is expected by a service that will allow designers and designers of clothing to upload their virtual pieces to the Internet before they are produced. On the other hand, buyers will be able to try on new items on their virtual dummies and express interest - depending on the service used: buy, order, note interest, set a price.

As a result of a simple game, the manufacturer will be able to get clear answers to the questions: whether to start production of the product, how much to produce, through which channels to distribute, etc.
And those who can launch the web anthropometry service will be able to answer these questions. IMHO, abruptly Fasebook should work.