AI Birth Simulation in the Cloud
Recently, technological partners from VIBE came together at the Breda University of Applied Sciences to meet about the technical progress of the project. BUas, BlueTea and Fontys demonstrated recent developments made in the project and discussed technical challenges.
BUas Improvements to the AI 3D Models
BUas demonstrated their latest version of the AI VIBE models in Unreal Engine. The new Lumen lighting system included in Unreal Engine 5 and the inclusion of new background environments further increases believability to the project. Added hair physics and newly added animations that simulate more aspects of childbirth further increase the realism of the AI models.
BlueTea Improvements to the AI Control Dashboard
BlueTea demonstrated their latest version of the AI VIBE Control Dashboard. An operator can use this dashboard to control the AI VIBE Avatar in real-time. Functionality of recording spoken audio dialog and the mirroring of mouth movement is included and done via a microphone and a camera. The audio recording and visual capture of the mouth of the dashboard operator is sent to the avatar in real-time and mirrored onto the 3D model.
The dashboard itself gives a clear overview of what kind of animations the operator can select. The current selected animation is highlighted and displays the progress of the animation in real-time. The operator can select the current state the patient is in; be it active labor, during childbirth or post-childbirth for example. They can also select the mood of the patient (relaxed, stressed or more) and a condition the patient is currently in (like dizziness or fatigue).
Fontys AI Avatar Research
Fontys highlighted their latest research on how to automatically test and validate the AI avatar by filtering out errors in the animations. This is done by making snapshots of the animations and looking for details that are slightly off. The process then filters data that details the error-margin between those screenshots. The ones that stand out the most will be corrected by the 3D Artist.
Fontys also created a solution for running the application from the cloud. This means that the end user does not have to install or update any software locally, but just run the application from anywhere with a stable internet connection. Although it is still a work in progress, this development looks promising for the future of VIBE!
The VIBE project is a collaborative innovation project enabled by the European Union, OP Zuid, the Dutch government, the province of Noord-Brabant, and the municipality of Tilburg to enforce the regional innovation system.