Anthropometry Devices: A Comparative Study

Background

Ergonomics have been used as a strategy to improve the manufacture and service systems. This research has focused their efforts on determining the impact of many variables that affect the performance of humans during work activities. Cavassa (2006) mentions the effect of the importance of dimensions in work areas. In other words, from the ergonomists point of view, study the measure of the human body is the key to design the environment and the equipment to humans with the aim to assure the maximum benefit and capacity of the users. In order to determine or measure these performances exist different fields associated with ergonomics, one of them and the reason for this chapter is anthropometry.

Some concepts of anthropometry are “disciple that works with a physical measure of the human body and his proportions” (Cruz & Garcia, 2001), “is a branch of a human sciences that determine the measures of human body, the shape, the strong, the mobility, the flexibility and the work capacity” (Pheasant & Haslegrave, 2005), etc. According to the concepts described above, the principal role of anthropometry is to determine body dimensions to be used in the design or re-design of equipment, workstations and also, environments used by humans.