Workshop: Open Source Human Body Model Development

The recently started EU-project VIRTUAL (https://projectvirtual.eu) invites experts interested in Human Body Modeling. The event is free of charge. The workshop is held in conjunction with the Human Modeling and Simulation conference, October 18-19 in Berlin (https://www.carhs.de/en/human-modeling-overview.html).

VIRTUAL’s objective is to provide procedures and open access tools to assess the benefit of novel safety systems. The project started on June 1st 2018 and will continue until May 31st 2022. The goal is to establish an European based global hub for Open Source Virtual Testing and to demonstrate its success in traffic safety. Open Source Human Body Models (OS-HBMs) of both men and women will be made available in a format that can be morphed to represent different ages and sizes. The models will represent car occupants, vulnerable road users and users of public transport.

This workshop will give an overview of the VIRTUAL project and present the challenges we face today. We aim to create a versatile basic model that allows for future refinements in an open source environment - which stakeholders from all over the world are welcome to use -  to further develop the HBM. In parallel we will create a sustainable web-based where the HBMs can be freely downloaded. We will also initiate a community and encourage users to share their experience, model refinements and advice with the community. Our long term goal is that we, together with the stakeholders, will jointly provide a HBM that can be morphed/scaled and is therefore suitable to represent any human length, gender, age, BMI, posture etc. The HBM will be divided into sections which allows users to refine one body section and then attach it to the full HBM.

Tentative agenda:

16:30 Welcome, short introductions of the participants.

16:45 Overview of the VIRTUAL project.

17:00 Presentation of current challenges in the VIRTUAL project with focus on the modeling principles of the HBM and the open source concept. We will present our current status and thoughts on how we can achieve our ambitions to make the HBM possible to morph and adapt, and to make it computationally efficient and robust.

17:30 Short presentations from participants (also external) on other research activities/projects that are of relevance to the VIRTUAL project.

17:50 Discussion, questions and input from the participants.

18:30 End of the workshop. Informal dinner with possibility for continued discussion.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Mats Svensson, on behalf of the VIRTUAL consortium

mats.svensson@chalmers.se