ITR: The Virtual Trainer

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This is the first year funding of a three-year continuing award. The goal of the "Virtual Trainer" is to create a computer-based animation that can interactively teach how to move. The hardware requirements for the Virtual Trainer in its final stage would be an inexpensive state-of-the-art personal computer equipped with a camera system. The Virtual Trainer will be able to demonstrate movements to its user, monitor the execution of these movements by the user, and suggest corrections in case of inadequate performance. The Virtual Trainer will be useful in a large number of applications, including rehabilitation of movement-impaired patients (e.g., stroke-patients), sport and exercise education, dance instruction, and interactive entertainment industry. Additionally, the technology developed for the Virtual Trainer has the potential to pioneer new algorithms for robot control using "teaching from demonstration", to contribute to the development of automated monitoring systems for human environments, to the generation of humanoid computer simulations, and also to gaining new insights into biological motor control and the functioning of the nervous system. The research team of this project will primarily focus on issues of movement recognition and movement generation with the Virtual Trainer for rehabilitating stroke-impaired patients with upper and lower limb disabilities.