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Dance with digital human showcases how technology is being applied to sport science to help athletes perform at their best. In these videos, CSIRO experts show how  artificial intelligence and motion capture techniques can transform humans into digital humans. Delivered as part of National Science Week in 2023, but suitable year round, students can warm up with an AFLW player and learn a dance with ‘Dizzy the Digital Human’.

This activity is suitable for students from Year 1 to Year 9.

What is a Digital Human? 

Our Data 61 researchers have developed a markerless motion capture system called the Digital Human that tracks movement of joints using machine learning algorithms. The technology has been applied to enhance dive mechanics, ergonomics in the workplace and the team are working to apply the technology to a range of other solutions, including sports.

Teacher resource

Download the teacher resource PDF (2 MB) that complements the Dance with a Digital Human videos.

Videos

How do we Make a Digital Human?

[Music]
Thanks future Simon. We're here in the Mixed Reality lab in Clayton in Melbourne and we'll learn about how we make digital humans.

Look at all these cameras and look at all this equipment. We're going to use these to measure human movement and build a digital human model.

Over here I'm showing movements on a GoPro. You can see the joints of my body. We use these to build up a digital model.

So what is a digital human? A digital human is a computer model of our body. It includes the shape of our body, the way we move and 
what's happening on the inside. We can use it in the doctor's surgery to improve our 
health. We can use it on the sports field to improve our performance and we can use it 
in the workplace to reduce injury.

There's so many ways this technology can improve our 
lives.

Now excuse me I'm getting back to work.

whoa [Music]

Researcher Simon Harrison takes us through the process of making a digital human in the Mixed Reality Lab at CSIRO.

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Warm up this National Science Week with AFLW player Sarah Lampard

Hey, everyone My name's Sarah Lampard, and I'm an Australian footballer and I play in the AFLW. I love sport, I love science,
and I love technology.

So I'm really excited to get turned into a digital human later today. I love sport 'cause of the way it makes me feel out in the field. I feel free. I love to run around, I love to play with my mates, and most importantly, I love winning with my mates as well.

Before we get on the field though, it's super important to warm up, and warmups are so important because firstly, they help us prevent injuries.

And secondly, they also help us perform at our best. So we'll take you through one of those shortly as well.

But I also love the way that technology is involved in the AFL as well, whether that's from GPS units tracking how fast we run to little other devices that help us with our injury prevention and coming back from injuries as well. All three interconnect really well, and I'm excited to get stuck into it.

Let's jump into the digital realm. All right, we'll start our little warmup by jogging on the spot. So follow along with me.

This will make sure that our blood is pumping around our body and we are starting to heat up a little bit.

So keep jogging. And now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do some high knees. So try and get your knees nice and high up to about the height of your hips. And we'll do some butt kicks.

And now, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do some side steps. So we'll head this way with me first. AFL football has a lot of change in direction so it's super important to make sure that we're ready to go and ready to change direction. So side steps are super important. We'll head back this way. And back we go.

It's also important to warm up our hamstrings 'cause there's a lot of kicking and sprinting in AFL football. So we warm those up as well. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna do some hamstringing sweeps. So you're gonna reach down and sweep the ground just like this.

And you should feel this in your hamstringing so that you should feel a bit of a pull in through here. And now that our hamstrings are nice and warm, we'll warm up our quads now as well. So we'll grab our foot and pull our leg up. And go the other side.

And we'll keep changing. And the other side. And back we go. And now, we will just open up our hips as well. So we'll go do this exercise
called opening the gates. So this gets our hips nice and warm. So pull your legs outwards.

Open those gates. And now what we'll do is we'll close the gate. So reverse that action. All right, so you should be feeling pretty warm now. So we'll get back to jogging on the spot, but this time, we'll go a bit faster. So before games, we like to make sure that we get some high speed running in. So we're gonna sprint. So go even faster. Even go as fast as you can if you'd like.

All right. Now, we should be feeling pretty warm now. That's it for me. Have a great National Science Week.

Sarah takes us through an AFL warm up and is turned into a digital human to highlight the best ways to warm up our muscles for movement.

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Dance with a digital human during National Science Week!

Hi, everyone, my name's Lauren. I work at CSIRO.

I'm also known as Dizzy the Digital Dancer.

We're gonna learn some moves for National Science Week and understand how scientists can use information about our bodies to do really cool things.

Let's get started.

We're going to imagine that our robot is turned off, so we start facing downwards like this, and when we hear the music, we're going to stand up.

Our first move, we're going to bend forward at our knees, bend, and then we're gonna pick our leg up and swing it out.

We're gonna twist. And back to the front, we put our hands up, and point them forward.

Let's try that together.

We're gonna bend at our knees.

We go one, two, swing our leg, twist, twist, hands up and point.

Our next step, we're gonna do a slow robot walk.

So we're gonna pick our leg up, one, two, three, four.

We're gonna look to the side, back to the front, put our hand up, and we're gonna do a slow wave, using each one of our fingers.

Let's try that bit together.

From our robot walk, we go one, two, three, four.

We look, look, hand up and slow wave.

Let's see if we can remember that from the very beginning.

We're gonna bend our knees forward.

We go one, two, swing our leg, twist, twist, hands up and point.

Robot walk, robot walk.

We look, look, hand up, slow wave.

Fantastic.

Our next step, we're gonna imagine that there's a box in front of us and we're gonna touch each corner of the box.

So we go one, two, three, four.

And to finish that, we're gonna touch our heads, shoulders, knees, and toes.

Let's try that bit together. We go point, two, three, four, heads, shoulders, knees, toes.

Let's see if we can remember that from the very beginning.

We're gonna bend our knees.

We go one, two, three, four.

Twist, twist, hands up, and point.

Robot walk, robot walk. We look, look, hand up, slow wave.

Point, two, three, four.  Heads, shoulders, knees, and toes.

Now, to finish off our dance, we all get to do a freestyle robot for eight counts.

We're going to pick whatever move you like.

We go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

The music's then gonna finish.

We're gonna power down as well.

Let's try that twice through from the beginning with music with Dizzy.

Let's rewind and do it again.

That was amazing.

I hope you all enjoyed that.

Keep dancing and keep moving.

Back to you, Simon.

Dizzy the digital dancer will take you step by step through the National Science Week dance, inspired by robots.

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If you missed the webinar, or would like to watch it again, you can check out the recordings:

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