Elbows Higher! Performing, Observing and Correcting Exercises by a Virtual Trainer (original) (raw)

Towards a reactive virtual trainer

2006

A Reactive Virtual Trainer (RVT) is an Intelligent Virtual Agent (IVA) capable of presenting physical exercises that are to be performed by a human, monitoring the user and providing feedback at different levels. Depending on the motivation and the application context, the exercises may be general ones of fitness to improve the user's physical condition, special exercises to be performed from time to time during work to prevent for example RSI, or physiotherapy exercises with medical indications. In the paper we discuss the functional and technical requirements of a framework which can be used to author specific RVT applications. The focus is on the reactivity of the RVT, manifested in natural language comments on readjusting the tempo, pointing out mistakes or rescheduling the exercises. We outline the components we have implemented so far: our animation engine, the composition of exercises from basic motions and the module for analysis of tempo in acoustic input.

Virtual Trainer for Physical Activities using a Natural User Interface

2017

Despite the known health benefits of regular participation in physical activity people still refuse this practise. Nowadays, Virtual Reality (VR) is a very powerful and compelling computer tool by which humans can interface and interact with computer-generated environments. In this paper, we propose a virtual training system which can be customized for the physical activity level of the user. System provides real time visual action guide and a performance’s feedback of users through a Natural User Interface (NUI). We conduct a brief pilot study to evaluate our virtual trainers in which participants’ performance doing physical activities is evaluated via our NUI. Initial results indicate that virtual training through a NUI is motivating and entertaining for any kind of user, in particular for individuals with low level of physical activity.

Virtual Fitness Trainer using Artificial Intelligence

International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET), 2023

An AI fitness trainer is a computer application that utilizes the capabilities of Python, OpenCV, and MediaPipe to guide users through physical fitness routines. The application uses computer vision techniques provided by OpenCV to track the user's movements and provide feedback on form and technique. MediaPipe is used to process the video data and provide realtime analysis. The application also utilizes machine learning algorithms to provide personalized fitness recommendations and progress tracking. The combination of these technologies provides a highly interactive and effective way for users to improve their physical fitness.

Virtual Coach: Monitoring Exercises and Aerobic Dance Generation

2021

1Student, Dept. of Computer Engineering, Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India 2Professor, Dept. of Computer Engineering, Datta Meghe College of Engineering, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract Virtual Coach was developed to play the role of a personal fitness trainer. The main aim was to prevent the trainee from injury caused by incorrect exercise form. This was achieved using Pose Estimation. The sequence of poses captured while performing a particular exercise was mapped to the correctness of the form. This information about correctness was then used to provide real-time captions, audio and visual feedback to the user. This sequential model was trained with data comprising weightlifting and muscle building exercises. Since yoga involves holding the body in a particular position, the assessment for yoga was d...

Automated exercise progression in simulation-based training

IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1994

As simulator-based training systems become more complex, the amount of effort required to generate, monitor, and maintain training exercises multiplies greatly. This has significantly increased the burden on the instructors, potentially making the training experience less efficient as well as less effective. Research on intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) has largely addressed this issue by replacing the instructor with a computer model of the appropriate pedagogical concepts and the domain expertise. While this approach is highly desirable, the effort required to develop and maintain an ITS can be quite significant. A more modest as well as practical alternative to an ITS is the development of intelligent computer-based tools that can support the instructors in their tasks. The advantage of this approach is that various tools can be developed to address the different aspects of the instructor's duties. Moreover, without the burden of having to repace the instructor, these tools are more easily developed and fielded in existing trainers. One aspect of an instructor's task is to assess the students' performance after each training exercise and select the next exercise based on their previous performances. It would clearly be advantageous if this exercise selection process were to be automated, thus relieving the instructor of a significant burden and allowing him to concentrate on other tasks. Therefore, the focus of this paper is the development of a stand-alone system capable of determining exercise progression and remediation automatically during a training session in a simulator-based trainer, on the basis of the students's past performance. Instructional heuristics were developed to carry out the exercise progression process. A prototype was developed and applied to gunnery training on the Army M1 main battle tank. I. PROBLEM STATEMENT AND OBJECTIVE OF RESEARCH NTELLIGENT tutoring systems (ITS) are generally devel-I oped to take the place of the instructor. Ideally, by having no human instructor, the efficiency of an instructor is increased infinitely. Control of the progression of exercises, evaluation of performance, feedback to student, and student record update are some of the functions that can be automated by an ITS. However, the level of effort required to develop and field a full ITS can be quite high and therefore very costly, especially when applied to previously existing simulator-based trainers. This paper presents the concept of an Intelligent instructor Support System (ZZSS) [l] as an alternative to an ITS for simulator-based training. Rather than replace the isntructor, IISS provides the tools for automating various facets of an Manuscript

Intelligent Feedback for Simulation Based Training

This paper describes the architecture and the process of a system designed to provide intelligent feedback in Virtual Reality-based training simulators. This system will give multimodal feedback to the student as a response to his/her actions in real-time. We propose a two step process. The fist step is designed to select the most relevant messages about the student's activity. The second step selects the feedback message that will be communicated to the student. The process takes into consideration some factors such as the number and nature of the committed mistakes, the student's level, the intrusiveness of each kind of feedback, the time elapsed since the last feedback and so on. The instructor can customize the behavior of the feedback system by choosing the relevance of the parameters used in the feedback selection process. In this way, the feedback system can be helpful for the instructor, as he/she can use a suitable behavior in different types of training sessions (e...

Natural User Interfaces: A Physical Activity Trainer

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Despite the known health benefits of regular participation in physical activity people still refuse this practise. Nowadays, Virtual Reality (VR) is a very powerful and compelling computer tool by which humans can interface and interact with computer-generated environments. In this paper, we propose a virtual training system which can be customized for the physical activity level of the user. System provides real time visual action guide and a performance's feedback of users through a Natural User Interface (NUI). We conduct a brief pilot study to evaluate our virtual trainers in which participants' performance doing physical activities is evaluated via our NUI. Initial results indicate that virtual training through a NUI is motivating and entertaining for any kind of user, in particular for individuals with low level of physical activity.

IRJET- Virtual Coach: Monitoring Exercises and Aerobic Dance Generation

IRJET, 2021

Virtual Coach was developed to play the role of a personal fitness trainer. The main aim was to prevent the trainee from injury caused by incorrect exercise form. This was achieved using Pose Estimation. The sequence of poses captured while performing a particular exercise was mapped to the correctness of the form. This information about correctness was then used to provide real-time captions, audio and visual feedback to the user. This sequential model was trained with data comprising weightlifting and muscle building exercises. Since yoga involves holding the body in a particular position, the assessment for yoga was done using a geometric model which compared the user pose to a reference pose. The second aim of Virtual Coach was to make cardio fun by generating aerobic dance moves dynamically on beats of the user's choice. The LSTM model mapped music features to dance pose key points extracted by Pose Estimation. These 2D dancing skeletons were then rendered on the screen for the user to follow along. The dance moves generated were natural and harmonious. Results demonstrated that Virtual Coach is reliable and capable of assisting the trainee in maintaining the correct exercise form during workout.

Collaborative virtual training with physical and communicative autonomous agents

Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, 2014

Virtual agents are a real asset in Collaborative Virtual Environment for Training (CVET) as they can replace missing team members. Collaboration between such agents and users, however, is generally limited. We present here a whole integrated model of CVET focusing on the abstraction of the real or virtual nature of the actor to define a homogenous collaboration model. First, we define a new collaborative model of interaction. This model notably allows to abstract the real or virtual nature of a teammate. Moreover, we propose a new role exchange approach so that actors can swap their roles during training. The model also permits the use of physically based objects and characters animation to increase the realism of the world. Second, we design a new communicative agent model which aims at improving collaboration with other actors using dialogue to coordinate their actions and to share their knowledge. Finally, we evaluated the proposed model to estimate the resulting benefits for the users and we show this is integrated in existing CVET applications.

A Cognitive Model for the Generation and Explanation of Behaviour in Virtual Training Systems

Explanation-aware Computing, 2008

Instructors play a major role in many of the current vir- tual training systems. Consequently, either many instructors per trainee are needed, which is expensive, or single instructors perform highly de- manding tasks, which might lead to suboptimal training. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a cognitive model that not only generates the behaviour of virtual characters, but also