An ontology of virtual humans: incorporating semantics into human shapes

Most of the efforts concerning the digital representation of humans (Virtual Humans, or VHs) have been focused on synthesizing geometry for static or animated shapes. The next step is to consider VHs as active semantic entities with features, functionalities, interaction skills, etc. The ontology for VHs we are defining will provide the "semantic layer" required to reconstruct, store, retrieve and reuse content and knowledge related to VHs. The connection between the semantic and graphical data is achieved thanks to an intermediate layer based on anatomical features extracted from a morphological shape analysis. The resulting shape descriptors can be used to derive higher-level descriptors to be used model active VHs.