A virtual human being is playing football at the Bloemsingel

Groninger biomechanic develops spectacular animations

A virtual human being is playing football at the Bloemsingel

The university building is old and is going to be replaced, in expectation of a new building and sale; it isn’t modernized for a while. You can see this, but not what is happening in the inside of the building. In the monumental building, the Rijksuniversity Groningen has one of her most modern research centers. There, biomechanic Bert Otten is using virtual reality in a way that other researchers in this world make one’s mouth water. With his computers he can do, what up to now, they held for not possible to do research on. Even Manchester United wants to make use of his tricks to track down football talent.

Bloemsingel 1 is such a beautiful building from the beginning of the last century. High corridors. A crawl-through-sneak-through walk via the backdoor. The building is breathing the atmosphere of the past. Even the lecture desks have the size of many short students in former days. In the laboratory in the building, bottles were bubbling in the acid closets and people were walking around in white coats.

Behind one of the doors, a whole different world is taking place, the one of the future. The big room is darkened. Here, only artificial light is penetrating the room. It looks like a discotheque with a big video screen. Lamps and cameras are hanging over a rustproof installation. Tables with computer equipment are standing in a corner.

In front of the screen: an elevation for a subject. Hydraulic equipment under the floor can move the platform like a airplane simulator. The subject on the platform responds to the movements of the platform and the three-dimensional images on the screen. Thanks to a super fast computer, the images also can respond to the movements of the subject. Almost everything is possible to adjust.

The place of the ‘VJ” behind the buttons is taken in by Otten. He has, as the first scientist, created an almost complete virtual human being. With computers, you could let people move, but they only looked like people. For years, Otten put exact data about people into the computer. He calculated de way of moving and the forces that are necessary for this. An unrivaled animation technique was born.

The past years, Otten gained experience at the computer animation studio MOTEK in Amsterdam. They wanted to refine the existing techniques for different purposes and approached Otten, because of his biomechanical model of a skater. He could make the puppet skate on the computer, which gave him surprising insight in skate movements and fame.

The studio actualized last year, together with Groninger researcher and the Amsterdam rehabilitation doctor Imelda de Groot, the first interactive system for biomechanics. Next, Otten got the possibility to make a new version and integrated all available knowledge about the (im) possibilities of the human body.

He prefers to let somebody snowboard on the platform to demonstrate the system. When that person goes to the right, the snowboarder on the screen goes also to the right. When the snowboarder touches an obstacle, then the platform shakes as if the subject himself drives into an obstacle. The game is just an example. ‘Here we only do scientific research. Sometimes we also use snowboarden for this, for example to measure quickness of reaction.’ During the serious work, subjects wear a suit with 25 special balls on crucial places, like the elbows and the chin. Six cameras record the exact reflection of the infrared light on the balls and with that the movements.

According the Groninger researcher, in the future, the equipment can also be used for rehabilitation research. ‘ Someone with a prosthesis knee has to learn to use it. By analyzing the balance of the patient and at the same time giving an alternative in virtual space, the learning process can be quickened.’

For the moment, virtual reality will be used for five scientific studies. Neurologist professor Nico Leenders hopes to track down very early signals of the central movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease and professor Klaas Postema thinks to get better understanding in the development of the use of artificial legs. Otten set up a “football field” for researcher Koen Lemmink, to measure the quickness of reaction of football players. Time after time, the subject sees a so-called football coming towards him, from different corners. As for movements, they ask much from top-class foot ballplayers. They have to see the ball, know where it’s coming, determine the speed, measure how long it takes them to come to the place, to run at the exact moment, jump, in the meantime estimate what the opponent is going to do and to find a hole or a free team-mate to head the ball to. All of that in a fraction of a second. With an in Groningen developed digital football test, they can prevent in the future that selected talents have to train for years without ever reaching the highest level. Prophets of top talents of Chris Visscher fits right into the Groninger research.

Otten has turn out to be a super technician and a programmer of the CAREN system (Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment), but is also as a biologist and a biomechanic involved in all studies. He himself is going to use it for fundamental research of the making of movements. ‘There are two theories about this. One says that movements originate through a chain of muscle actions on the basis of stimuli from accompanying parts of the body. According to the other theory the brain commands a complete image of the motional machine. I think that with CAREN we come closer to the truth, which will be in between.’

An other fundamental research will be done by professor biomechanics Theo Mulder. This psychologist has high expectations of CAREN. According to him, for the first time the system gives the possibility to do research of the existence of the complex movements and the adaptability of people. In his book ‘ The Natural adapter’, he makes clear how movement and ‘adaptability’ is tied up with the brain.

‘I’m running and I wonder the fact that I can control the road without falling. My feet touch the ground and are coming off again, I get around a fallen branch and a slant paving stone, I anticipate a parked car and a traffic light in the distance. I watch the ground and also not, I see my feet, but at the same time I’m hardly aware of them. Still I can’t close my eyes, so I need the information, which I pick up carelessly out of the moving world under me and around me. I approach a curb and without slowing down, my right foot steps on the sidewalk, followed by the left foot, which follows beyond my field of vision. How can that happen? How did I know when I had to raise my foot so that it skimmed over the surface? Why can I do that? Why don’t I fall and why is this so common?’ (From ‘The Natural adapter’)

According to Mulder, brains are among other things, their link with all our movements, the last unknown field that creates an ultimate challenge for the science. He wants to know why we automatically raise our hand in a certain manner when we want to pick up a cup and that this hand moves different when we want to pick up a pen. ‘ We now can do that with a virtual cup and see what happens if the cup suddenly changes into an other object. I’m curious to see how that works.’

Frits Poelman