«The online retailer is inviting people to an office in New York to measure small changes in size and shape over the course of 20 weeks. Those chosen via a survey to participate in the 10, semimonthly visits will receive Amazon gift cards worth up to $250, according to an invitation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We are interested in understanding how bodies change shape over time,” according to the survey. The invite comes from Amazon’s new 3-D body scanning unit, an outgrowth of its acquisition last year of computer vision startup Body Labs.

Accurately predicting how a pair of jeans or a suit will fit is a Holy Grail for retail. Technology to model a human body and how clothing will look on it has a wide range of applications, from being able to prevent returns of ill-fitting garments to on-demand printing and production».

Source : Amazon Wants to Know Your Waistline – WSJ