The Center for Human Modeling and Simulation (HMS)

SEAS Faculty Meeting Overview

May 2001

Norm Badler

Affiliated Faculty

Norman I Badler, CIS (Director)

Dimitris Metaxas, CIS

Jean Gallier, CIS

Martha Palmer, CIS

Barry Silverman, SE

Lyle Ungar, CIS

Susan Margulies, BE

David Meaney, BE

HMS Structure

• Director: Norm Badler• Associate Director: Karen Carter• Staff programmers: Jan Allbeck, Matt Beitler• PhD students: ~25: approx. 25% of CIS PhDs)• Digital Media Design undergraduate major• Corporate Involvement: Alias-Wavefront, nVidia,

Lockheed-Martin

Virtual Human Modeling and Simulation

Virtual Humans are computer models of people that can be used as substitutes for “the real thing”

• by embedding real-time, graphically embodied representations of

– ourselves,– other live participants (avatars),– or autonomous or directed agents

• into 3D virtual environments (such as medical procedures, military simulations, job training, task evaluations, communicative agents on the Internet, etc.)

Research Directions• Connecting language (instructions and descriptions)

and action through embodied human models.• Physics-based modeling for graphics and vision.• Models for limb motions, gestures, facial movements,

eyes, emotions, personality, and gait.• Engineering design human factors evaluation and

validation.• Training applications: Medical, military, police, job,

decision-making.• Internet applications: real-time avatars and agents

Income and Technology Transfer

• Research Contracts and Grants: >$2M per year– NSF, USAF, ONR, NASA, NIH, Army, …

• Commercial spin-offs:– 1995 DRaW Computing Associates

– 1996 Jack software: Transom Technologies, Inc.; bought by EAI (1998); bought by Unigraphics (2000)

• In progress:– Biofeedback game controller

– MarchingOrder

Standards Activities

• SAE G-13 Digital Human Models

• MPEG-4 (Face and Body animation)

• Web3D Virtual human architecture group: H-Anim (international representative: Matt Beitler)

• HumanMarkup (XML)

Student Placement (recent)• Disney Feature Films (4)• Pacific Data Images (2)• Susquehanna Partners (5)• Sony Pictures Imageworks• Oracle• Boeing Commercial Airplanes• NASA Johnson Space Center• Harvard Medical Center• U. of Houston• SUNY Stony Brook • Start-ups (3)• Consulting (2)