Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

European Initiatives

• Title: EXPloring REsponsive Shapes for Seamless desIgn of Virtual Environments.

• Programm: ERC Advanced Grant

• Duration: 04/2012 - 03/2017

• Inria contact: Marie-Paule Cani

To make expressive and creative design possible in virtual environments, the goal is to totally move away from conventional 3D techniques, where sophisticated interfaces are used to edit the degrees of freedom of pre-existing geometric or physical models: this paradigm has failed, since even trained digital artists still create on traditional media and only use the computer to reproduce already designed content. To allow creative design in virtual environments, from early draft to progressive refinement and finalization of an idea, both interaction tools and models for shape and motion need to be revisited from a user-centred perspective. The challenge is to develop reactive 3D shapes – a new paradigm for high-level, animated 3D content – that will take form, refine, move and deform based on user intent, expressed through intuitive interaction gestures inserted in a user-knowledge context. Anchored in Computer Graphics, this work reaches the frontier of other domains, from Geometry, Conceptual Design and Simulation to Human Computer Interaction. The contract ended successfully in March 2017.

• Title: Position and Personalize Advanced Human Body Models for Injury Prediction

• Programm: FP7

• Duration: November 2013 - April 2017

• Inria contact: F. Faure

In passive safety, human variability is currently difficult to account for using crash test dummies and regulatory procedures. However, vulnerable populations such as children and elderly need to be considered in the design of safety systems in order to further reduce the fatalities by protecting all users and not only so called averages. Based on the finite element method, advanced Human Body Models for injury prediction have the potential to represent the population variability and to provide more accurate injury predictions than alternatives using global injury criteria. However, these advanced HBM are underutilized in industrial R&D. Reasons include difficulties to position the models – which are typically only available in one posture – in actual vehicle environments, and the lack of model families to represent the population variability (which reduces their interest when compared to dummies). The main objective of the project will be to develop new tools to position and personalize these advanced HBM. Specifications will be agreed upon with future industrial users, and an extensive evaluation in actual applications will take place during the project. The tools will be made available by using an Open Source exploitation strategy and extensive dissemination driven by the industrial partners.Proven approaches will be combined with innovative solutions transferred from computer graphics, statistical shape and ergonomics modeling. The consortium will be balanced between industrial users (with seven European car manufacturers represented), academic users involved in injury bio-mechanics, and partners with different expertise with strong potential for transfer of knowledge. By facilitating the generation of population and subject-specific HBM and their usage in production environments, the tools will enable new applications in industrial R&D for the design of restraint systems as well as new research applications. This contract ended successfully in April 2017.