The U.S. Army‘s Research Institute of Environmental Medicine continues to develop a computer program that could create three-dimensional, full-anatomy avatars of individual soldiers regardless of gender and body shape and size.

Gary Zientara and Reed Hoyt of USARIEM began research for the project in 2010 for potential applications in military medicine and equipment design, the Army said Monday.

“This strategy has the possibility to create a large library of avatars — indeed, an online avatar ‘Army’ available for research use and, as importantly, can provide individualized avatars representing uniquely specialized members of special units,” Zientara said.

The computer program has so far created 250 avatars out of 500 3D body scans collected by the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center’s anthropometry team as part of the first generation effort in 2015, the service branch said.

Zientara noted the NSRDEC provides the 3D body surface scanning technology, which works to generate output that the USARIEM software uses to study body positioning by identifying external appendages, surface anatomical landmarks and skeleton.

The technology aims to optimize safety in high-risk simulations as well as lower costs of physical testing through possible applications in simulation and testing software, the service branch said.