Virtual humans are waiting in the wings, poised to serve and entertain us, said participants at the Virtual Humans 2 conference, which brought together academia, the military, technologists, and entertainment types to share their progress toward the discipline's Holy Grail - an autonomous, computer-generated individual indistinguishable from a human being.
They're not there yet. Problems still to be solved in the creation of satisfying synthetic humans are realistic hair, flexible expressive faces, clothing that moves, and a wider range of independent behavior, said Ellen Poon, associate visual-effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, who showed a reel of ILM's over-the-top digital creatures.
Nevertheless, VH2, held in Universal City, California, Tuesday through Thursday, produced startling evidence of the presence of virtual humans already among us: You can play tennis with Elvis Presley, courtesy of professors Daniel Thalmann and Nadia Magnenat Thalmann of, respectively, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University of Geneva, creators of Virtual Marilyn Monroe.
You can improve cross-culture communication skills by working with Jack, the creation of a University of Pennsylvania team led by professor Norman Badler. A bevy of Jacks and Jills staff a training module that teaches peacekeepers to interpret gestures and body language of other cultures.
Will the equipment you manufacture in Duluth be operable by the shorter workers in your Tijuana maquilladora? Transom Jack, a commercial spin-off, is being used to test the ergonomics of autos and other machinery.
Trainees learn to make quick shoot-or-don't-shoot decisions when confronting terrorists in a training simulator developed by Sandia Laboratories for the US military.
The conference's heart-of-the-film-industry location is fitting, said Charles Ostman, senior fellow of the Institute for Global Futures. "People from robotics, artificial intelligence, physics, and computer graphics are all converging on a common target, Hollywood, because that’s where the money is."
Poon agreed. "This kind of work needs a Hollywood budget and a Hollywood time scale." She predicts that a major film project scripted for virtual actors will begin production in the next few months.
A prevalent meme at VH2 was "playing God," whether it's mowing down soldiers in a combat simulation, begetting monsters for science-fiction flicks, or birthing a charming child actor who doesn’t need to sleep or go to school. Poon said she looks forward to the day when "you'd have a pet person you could rear like my Tamagotchi chicken. Maybe some people will rear the pet child instead of a real one - it might solve the world's population problem."
Many of the simulation products demonstrated run on the NT and Wintel platforms. As home computers continue to bulk up, and Internet bandwidth increases, virtual humans will spread through the Internet, researchers promised. We'll step into our favorite sitcoms, or share fantastically rich 3-D worlds. There, we'll meet and greet not only each others' realistic avatars, but artificial intelligences.
We'll be able to brush up on social and emotional skills, such as disciplining a worker or chatting up a first date, by practicing first on virtual humans. "We can already capture human facial expression, and use that to animate a computer-generated character" said Linda Jacobson, VR evangelist at Silicon Graphics. "But those motions have yet to be simulated in an autonomous setting." Jacobson predicts the appearance of virtual surrogates within two-and-a-half to three years.
These virtual ones will play the bit parts in virtual worlds, allowing real humans to be the stars, said Steve Grand, director of technology for Cyberlife Inc., whose gremlin-like Creatures have already been created to display autonomous behavior.
With luck, when we meet one of the new race of synthetic people online, she'll say something besides, "Hi, where are you from?"
