The US Army is developing 3D avatar soldiers to test, among other things, “angles of vulnerability” in real ones engaged in operations.

The US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine has been working on the project since 2010, aiming to create the full-body avatar of individual soldiers.

The army researchers want to create avatars for every single one of soldiers regardless of gender, shape or size.

"This strategy has the possibility to create a large library of avatars, indeed, an online avatar 'Army' available for research use, and, as importantly, can provide individualized avatars representing uniquely specialized members of special units," said Gary Zientara, a mathematical modeler, who designed the project along with  Reed Hoyt, the chief of the biophysics and biomedical modeling division at USARIEM.

"Creating avatar models with this software enables individualized physiological modeling where an individual Soldier's avatar can be clothed and moved through different postures and positions in order to be able to test angles of vulnerability and eventually even exercise and test physiological responses in any climatic environment."

So far, 250 male avatars have been successfully developed.

"We consider our avatar products as 'first generation' due to the approximations made, but highly useful, nonetheless," said Zientara. "The project takes advantage of computer technology now available on off-the-shelf, moderately priced commercial workstations. A great feature is that the computation is a black-box operation, that is, it does not require any expert input. Easy scanning and easy computing make our avatars a widely deployable tool for the Army."

The 3D army could serve as an alternative to actual testing by amelioration of high-risk simulations.

"Human-like computer graphics figures shown in Hollywood movies or in online games are hollow, lacking internal anatomy," Zientara said. "These movie or game avatars do not differ much from the body scan input used in our computation of full-anatomy avatars. Hollywood graphics figures or gaming avatars are simplified, compared to the full-anatomy USARIEM avatars, and are usually decorated to model superficial physical characteristics and clothing textiles. The simplicity of the Hollywood representation makes those cartoon avatars much easier to animate than the USARIEM avatars."