Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

ANR SOHUSIM (10/2010-09/2014)

Participants : Ali Hamadi Dicko, François Faure.

Sohusim (Soft Human Simulation) is a ANR Project which started on October 1^st 2010. It is done in collaboration between: EVASION (Inria), Fatronik France (TECNALIA), DEMAR (Inria), HPC PROJECT and the CHU de Montpellier.

This project deals with the problem of modeling and simulation of soft interactions between humans and objects. At the moment, there is no software capable of modeling the physical behavior of human soft tissues (muscles, fat, skin) in mechanical interaction with the environment. The existing software such as LifeMod or OpenSim, models muscles as links of variable length and applying a force to an articulated stiff skeleton. The management of soft tissues is not taken into account and does not constitute the main objective of this software.

A first axis of this project aims at the simple modeling and simulation of a passive human manipulated by a mecatronics device with for objective the study and the systems design of patient's manipulation with very low mobility (clinic bed). The second axis concentrates on the detailed modeling and the simulation of the interaction of an active lower limb with objects like orthesis, exoskeleton, clothes or shoes. The objective being there also to obtain a tool for design of devices in permanent contact with the human who allows determining the adequate ergonomics in terms of forms, location, materials, according to the aimed use.

ANR CORPUS SPECTABLE EN LIGNES (01/2013-01/2015)

Participant : Rémi Ronfard.

Spectacle En Ligne(s) amplifies our collaboration with the Theatre des Celetins in Lyon, which was started with the Scenoptique project in 2011. Scenoptique investigates novel techniques for recording ultra-high definition video, reframing them and editing them into interactive movies. Spectacle En Ligne(s), is targeted on the creation and diffusion of an original data set of integral vídeo recordings of theatre and opera rehearsals. The data set is naturally suited to researchers interested in the creation process and the genetic analysis of dramatic art and mise en scene. To support research in this area, we are extending the audio and visual analysis tools developed in the Scenoptique project.

FUI Dynam'it (01/2012 - 02/2014)

Participant : Francois Faure.

2-year contract with two industrial partners: TeamTo (production of animated series for television) and Artefacts Studio (video games). The goal is to adapt some technologies created in SOFA, and especially the frame-based deformable objects  [43] , [42] to practical animation tools. This contract provides us with the funding of two engineers and one graphical artist during two years.

FUI Collodi (October 2013 - October 2016)

Participants : Francois Faure, Romain Testylier.

This 3-year contract with two industrial partners: TeamTo and Mercenaries Engineering (software for production rendering), is a follow-up and a generalization of Dynamit. The goal is to propose an integrated software for the animation and final rendering of high-quality movies, as an alternative to the ever-ageing Maya. It will include dynamics similarly to Dynamit, as well as innovative sketch-based kinematic animation techniques invented a Imagine by Martin Guay and Rémi Ronfard. This contract, started in October, funds 2 engineers for 3 years.

ANR CHROME (01/2012 - 08/2015)

Participant : Rémi Ronfard.

Chrome is a national project funded by the French Research Agency (ANR). The project is coordinated by Julien Pettré, member of MimeTIC. Partners are: Inria-Grenoble IMAGINE team (Remi Ronfard), Golaem SAS (Stephane Donikian), and Archivideo (Francois Gruson). The project has been launched in september 2012. The Chrome project develops new and original techniques to massively populate huge environments. The key idea is to base our approach on the crowd patch paradigm that enables populating environments from sets of pre-computed portions of crowd animation. These portions undergo specific conditions to be assembled into large scenes. The question of visual exploration of these complex scenes is also raised in the project. We develop original camera control techniques to explore the most relevant part of the animations without suffering occlusions due to the constantly moving content. A long-term goal of the project is to enable populating a large digital mockup of the whole France (Territoire 3D, provided by Archivideo). Dedicated efficient human animation techniques are required (Golaem). A strong originality of the project is to address the problem of crowded scene visualisation through the scope of virtual camera control, as task which is coordinated by Imagine team-member Rémi Ronfard.

Three phd students are funded by the project. Kevin Jordao is working on interactive design and animation of digital populations and crowds for very large environments. His advisors are Julien Pettré and Marie-Paule Cani. Quentin Galvanne is working on automatic creation of virtual animation in crowded environments. His advisors are Rémi Ronfard and March Christie (Mimetic team, Inria Bretagne). Julien Pettre. Chen-Kin Lim is working on crowd simulation and rendering of the behaviours of various populations using crowd patches. Her advisors are Rémi Ronfard and March Christie (Mimetic team, Inria Bretagne). Julien Pettre.

Action3DS (Caisse des dépôts) (10/2011 - 09/2014)

Participant : Rémi Ronfard.

Action3DS is a national project funded by Caisse des Dépots, as part of the projet Investissements d'avenir ACTION3DS research program entitled Technologies de numérisation et de valorisation des contenus culturels, scientifiques et éducatifs.

The project is coordinated by Thales Angénieux (Patrick Defay). Partners are Inria (Rémi Ronfard), Lutin Userlab (Charles Tijus), LIP6 (Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier), GREYC (David Tschumperlé), École nationale supérieure Louis Lumière (Pascal Martin), Binocle (Yves Pupulin), E2V Semiconductors and Device-Alab.

The goal of the project is the developpement of a compact professional stereoscopic camera for 3D broadcast and associated software. Rémi Ronfard is leading a work-package on real-time stereoscopic previsualization, gaze-based camera control and stereoscopic image quality.

The project is funding our new postdoc researcher Christophe Lino who is working on learning-based camera control for stereoscopic 3D cinematography with Rémi Ronfard.

AEN MorphoGenetics (10/2012 - 09/2015)

Participant : François Faure.

3-year collaboration with Inria teams Virtual Plants and Demar, as well as INRA (Agricultural research) and the Physics department of ENS Lyon. The goal is to better understand the coupling of genes and mechanical constraints in the morphogenesis (creation of shape) of plants. Our contribution is to create mechanical models of vegetal cells based on microscopy images. This project funds the Ph.D. thesis of Richard Malgat, who started in October, co-advised by François Faure (IMAGINE) and Arezki Boudaoud (ENS Lyon).

PEPS SEMYO (10/2012 - 09/2014)

Participant : François Faure.

2-year collaboration with Inria team DEMAR (Montpellier) and Institut de Myologie (Paris) to simulate 3D models of pathological muscles, for which no standard model exist. The main idea is to use our mesh-less frame-based model to easily create mechanical models based on segmented MRI images.