CoMBo · Correspondence through Millions Bodies: a large-scale, functional, and implicit data-driven method for 3D Humans matching

Correspondence through Millions Bodies: a large-scale, functional, and implicit data-driven method for 3D Humans matching

Geometry surrounds our lives, and we recognize ourselves as part of the 3D world. We inherently interact and reason about it, while its formalization is challenging and has tickled scholars since the dawn of civilization. The advent of computers and the study of Geometry Processing opened dramatic advancements and possibilities, like simulated surgeons' operations or whole digital universes. Among all the physical entities, the human bodies play a central role. Modern technologies can acquire, digitalize, and imitate human appearance at a stage that is indistinguishable from reality. Interest in Virtual Humans is growing fast in public opinion and several scientific and economic fields, from entertainment to medicine, social sciences to ergonomics. The market of Virtual Avatars has an estimated value of around USD 10 billion and is expected to reach more than USD 520 billion in 2030. However, our understanding can only be complete with tools to establish analogies: what is similar, what is different, or, namely, what is in correspondence. Finding such connections between human geometry is the key enabler for several downstream applications such as virtual try-on, texture transfer, or performing anthropometric statistics. Computer Vision and Graphics have studied the problem intensely since its fundamental and applicative relevance. Still, no method has affirmed itself as a robust and flexible standard to obtain robust and precise 3D correspondence across different humans. Noise, garments, objects, or partiality often pose challenges that require ad-hoc strategies. The CoMBo (Correspondence through Millions Bodies) project aims to fill this gap by combining multiple techniques: relying on a vast human dataset, exploiting flexible geometrical representation, and developing a novel data-driven framework cable to handle this comprehensive set of challenges. CoMBo will produce substantial scientific, economic, and social impacts in this strategic field, carrying an intense outreach to a broad audience, informing on bodies digitalization process and the importance of fair representation of the human experience in this fast-changing technology.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union