When "Distinguished" was added before my Member of the Technical Staff Bell Labs title, I learned those of us in physics and math research were expected to spend five to ten percent of our time working on "interesting" problems of important AT&T customers. It turned out to be a great program. We were be exposed to problems and ways of thinking we would never have encountered. Even when we weren't able to help, we always learned something. For me it was important to realize a person with an odd skill set can sometimes offer novel thinking and insight in an area they know little about.
Three of us found ourselves at the Pentagon (the military was an important AT&T customer) listening to a Colonel talk about problems with military uniforms. At first I felt like looking for an exit, but as he went on it became clear the problem was fascinating involving math, computer vision, and manufacturing processes that hadn't been invented.
It turns out it's very hard to fit clothing to people without getting sizing good enough and then following through with proper tailoring. The Army was worrying about human performance. Clothing fit and fabric type were big issues. They wanted to know if there was some way to quickly take about two dozen measurements that could be used to drive automated manufacturing tools.
It turns out the second part - computerized manufacturing - was and is a huge problem that's beginning to see solutions now. We focused on the measurement part and invented a laser scanner that could scan a human in about one minute producing a 3d model of their shape accurate to a few millimeters assuming they stood very still. Several prototypes were built at a university and were part of the largest anthropometric study of men and women at the time..
Going through the data, we learned you could fit over 99% of male and just under 98% of female soldiers by specifying a smaller set of measurements that could be taken by an enlisted person in a few minutes. The accuracy was better than any but the best fabrication processes of the day. They would just let vendors bit on it and pay whatever it took. There wasn't a need for laser scanners.
My sense of style is between zero and some negative or even imaginary number, but the problem of making high quality clothing without resorting high end design and tailoring continues to fascinate me. At the time it was a hard manufacturing problem that was central to a business that was north of a trillion dollars a year worldwide. It's more like a trillion and a half now. Millions of people, particularly women, complain about poor fit, fabrication and materials. I'll written about that in earlier posts in the fashion section and there is the emerging area of smart clothing that I'll skip for now.
The problem returned about ten years ago when I met a friend who happens to be a very thin women who stands six foot three inches. Getting anything that comes close was an issue and she makes regular use of a tailor. She has a serious sense of style, but she has to work at it to the point of designing and making her own clothing. It turned out she knew others with tall clothing issues. Two other friends are taller yet. When you're thinking about a problem it's often useful to start with cases where current processes are broken.
There are any number of custom shops, but you still pay a lot, selection is often much lower and delivery times can be weeks long with remakes and/or tailoring required. A friend with a very long inseam spends nearly $250 for a pair of ok, but not great jeans. That's out of her range, so she sews extensions made from old jeans legs onto the legs of regular jeans.
In the meantime work on automated pattern cutting and automated measurement to pattern software has made real progress. At this point the bottleneck step that is currently hard is stitching ... it's being solved, but only works for limited types of fabrics and designs and is more expensive than skilled human labor (remember that much of the human labor is in South Asia at horrible pay levels with awful conditions). But development is rapidly progressing and Chinese companies are sinking serious money into the technology.
Looking back to the Army work, one of our measurement ideas was to have people wear a bodysuit covered with fiducial marks a computer vision program could recognize. At the time it seemed too slow and calibration would be tricky, but it was something to watch. We tried to patent the idea, but were turned down as it was a bit out there and completely out of AT&T business interests. Now you can do it with a smartphone. An iPhone X with a 3d sensor could do a wonderful job, but even a regular phone might be good enough.
Today someone sent a piece on a stab at the problem - Zozotown.
Many other important issues come to mind, but throwing away sizing and fitting a wide range of body types is part of the what's necessary. I don't know if this company make it, but we're on the cusp of radical changes in clothing manufacture that may rival the introduction of the shipping container. One of the largest industries on Earth may begin the process of disruption.
I’m the six three thin one, but fit and style is hugely broken for plus women. I 1000% agree huge change is coming.
Posted by: Jheri | 07/11/2018 at 06:52 AM