Digital Human Model Applied to Training and Education in Sports

Abstract: The purpose of the study is to present a 3D digital interactive environment that is being developed in a game engine software to work with 3D DHM applied to training and education on Sports. This platform is being developed considering the need to analyze data from the same athletes' movements being repeated in different time or even to compare athletes' movements with different skill levels. The main 3D digital platform advantage is its flexibility to handle motion capture data from different MOCAP systems in order to facilitate kinematic analysis by users of low cost motion capture systems. Another important advantage is its portability that allows it to be used in different hardware platforms, as tablets and cell phones. The 3D platform development followed some specific steps, which make it possible not only to visualize the performed motion but also make the interaction between the user and the 3D character. The first step consists on the automatic reconstruction of the 3D character body segments based on motion capture data. The visual representation has as benefit that reduces noise that may be generated in the process of retargeting the motion capture data to a specific rig and character that differs from the actual bone structure original data. The visual representation is generated based on laser scanning data. This makes the representation to be a precise copy of the original bone position and structure of the athlete' specific movement that is being captured. The second step is to link each bone segment by generating a 3D model with a collision area that is necessary for future interaction with the user. After those steps, the user can select to track and generate data of a specific body segment; to play/pause the athlete movement and to draw graphs of segmental angles, joint angles and angular velocity. This functionality is still under development and test. The first application of the 3D digital platform was the movement analysis of high and low skill level Jiu-Jitsu athletes. This analysis allowed an improvement on the athletes’ performance and skills. In the future the integration between the 3D scanned athlete’s model and a virtual environment will allow to develop a virtual simulator that can be applied to education, training and entertainment.

Keywords: Digital human modeling, Training, Education, Jiu-jitsu

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100417

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