ITR: The Virtual Trainer

这是三年持续奖励的第一年资助。“虚拟教练”的目标是创建一个基于计算机的动画，可以互动地教授如何移动。在最后阶段，虚拟教练员所需的硬件将是一台配备照相系统的廉价的最先进的个人电脑。虚拟教练将能够向用户演示动作，监控用户执行这些动作，并在表现不佳的情况下提出纠正建议。虚拟教练将在许多应用中发挥作用，包括运动障碍患者（例如中风患者）的康复、体育和运动教育、舞蹈指导和互动娱乐行业。此外，为虚拟训练器开发的技术有可能开创使用“示范教学”的机器人控制新算法，有助于开发人类环境的自动监测系统，生成类人计算机模拟，并获得对生物运动控制和神经系统功能的新见解。本项目的研究团队将主要关注虚拟训练器的运动识别和运动生成问题，用于康复中风损伤的上肢和下肢残疾患者。

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.