((   Présentation de Luciana Porcher Nedel   ((

Présentation de Luciana Porcher Nedel

Date : Mardi 25 mars 2003 ŕ 9h30
Lieu : Auditorium de l'IRIT
Contact : Marco Winckler
tél : 05.61.63.37.41

Titre de la présentation :
Populating virtual worlds

Résumé : Around the middle of 90's, the web began to consolidate itself as a new communication way between common people and, little by little, the use of this new media became part of the life of a growing number of computer users. In the beginning, the communication was based on text, just some images and no sound. Ten years latter, with the bandwidth quickly increasing, we are using some text, many images, sound and real-time video. Now, it's time to navigate on other waters and really introduce web 3D. Web 3D considers a different communication metaphor, putting together: 3D interaction, representation of virtual worlds (realistic or not), realistic representation of live participants (avatars), autonomous inhabitants (agents) for these worlds and so on.
This talk will introduce some aspects involved in modeling and animating virtual humans. Concerning modeling, I will present the work we are developing at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil), on modeling human bodies based on anatomy. I will also talk about the animation of these bodies or, in other words, try to explain how to give life to a virtual human body. Recently, we are investigating how to create autonomous agents mixing computer graphics and artificial intelligence. More specifically, I will present some of our results using BDI (Believes, Desires and Intentions) logic to simulate intelligence. And finally, I will discuss some questions involving 3D interaction using simple and inexpensive virtual reality devices. The talk will be in French.

A propos du présentateur :
LUCIANA PORCHER NEDEL is assistant professor at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) where is developing her work since September 1998, on the Computer Science Undergraduate and Gradute Courses. She received her Ph.D degree in Computer Science from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1998. Since 1991 she is involved in computer animation research and has published several scientific papers on this area. With some of them, she won awards, including the first place in the Twelfth Thesis and Dissertation Contest, sponsored by the Brazilian Computing Society, and the Young Researcher Award bestowed in CGI´98 (Computer Graphics International Conference) from the Computer Graphics Society. Her research interests include computer animation, virtual humans, deformation and virtual reality. She is currently working on surgery planning and simulation, human simulation and virtual reality.