A three-dimensional anthropometric solid model of the hand based on landmark measurements

Hand anthropometry data are largely based on measurements of the hand in an outstretched hand posture and are, therefore, difficult to apply to tool gripping hand postures. The purpose of this project was to develop a representative, scalable hand model to be used with 3-D software drawing packages to aid in the ergonomic design of hand tools. Landmarks (66) on the palmar surface of the right hand of 100 subjects were digitised in four functional hand postures and, from these, 3-D surface models of a mean, 25th and 75th% hand were developed. The root mean square differences in hand length between the hand model and the digitised data for the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile hand were 11.4, 3.2 and 8.9mm, respectively. The corresponding values for hand breadth were 2.0, 0.4 and 1.4mm. There was good agreement between distances on the digitised hand and the hand model. The application of this research includes improved ergonomic hand tool design through the use of hand anthropometry reference values developed from the general population using grasping hand postures.