New 3D-image modelling technology enables anyone to have a 3D digital doppelgänger

Body Labs, Brown University, and the Max Planck Society announce license agreement

March 03, 2014
Body Labs, Inc., a company based in New York City, has developed the world's most advanced technology for creating 3D digital avatars in a fully automated way. The technology, based on nearly a decade of research from Brown University and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, makes it possible to easily create highly accurate and realistic avatars that can mimic the entire range of human motion. This capability opens up new possibilities for clothing and product design, 3D printing for specialty equipment and apparel, gaming, animation and online apparel sales. 

“Using the algorithms developed at Brown and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, we believe we can create a new interface between consumers and businesses,” explains Bill O'Farrell, CEO of Body Labs. “Consumers will be able to find, acquire and compare goods and services based on their particular size, shape and range of motion,” he adds. Together with Eric Rachlin, Alex Weiss, and Michael Black, who developed the new technology first at Brown University, USA, and now at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany, O’Farell is one of the founders of Body Labs.

Start-up Manager Florian Kirschenhofer and Licensing Manager Bernd Ctortecka of Max Planck Innovation, the Max Planck Society’s technology transfer organization, stated, “We are delighted that we were able to gain the support of Bill O'Farrell for this new 3D technology, who is an extremely experienced and successful entrepreneur with a far-reaching industry network."

To create an avatar, customers upload a body scan or enter a few body measurements into BodyHub, an online web application. BodyHub also gives users a range of additional functionality, including reposing, resizing, or animating the avatar.  For apparel design, this avatar can then be uploaded to computer-aided design (CAD) software, where it can be dressed and animated, allowing designers to see how their clothing fits various body types and see how the clothing is altered and shaped by body movement.

Body Labs ambition is to organize all the world’s information about human body shapes, pose and motion to make it accessible and useful. According to Eric Rachlin, Body Labs’ vice president of product design, “Our models provide a common language through which a huge number of products and services can be related the very things they are designed to accommodate.”

The Company is currently focused on the apparel and product design markets, but other applications include fitness tracking, video gaming, comparison shopping and ergonomics.

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