Error control and calibration in three-dimensional anthropometric measurement of the hand by laser scanning with glass support

The anthropometric measurement of the hands can provide fundamental data to support ergonomic equipment/tool design and thus improves work efficiency, comfort and safety. Three-dimensional (3D) measurement clearly can offer much more surface information than traditional dimension measurement. In this paper, a new approach is proposed of using a low-cost portable hand-held laser scanner along with a piece of glass used as a hand support to reduce scanning shadow areas and minimize involuntary movement of the hand during the 3D scanning process. To control and calibrate the refraction errors introduced by the glass, a special guiding device was developed. The details of 3D hand scanning procedure are described in the paper. To find out the exact refraction errors, a calibration experiment was conducted. The results show that the refraction errors are controllable by using the proposed methods.