Mosquito popper: a multiplayer online game for 3D human body scan data segmentation

• Main Author: Nolte, Zachary
• Other Authors: Baek, Stephen
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: University of Iowa 2017
• Subjects: Games With a Purpose (GWAP); Human Body Scan; Human Computation; Labeling; Segmentation; Industrial Engineering
• Online Access: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/5585; https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7065&context=etd

Game with a purpose (GWAP) is a concept that aims to utilize the hours spent in the world playing video games by everyday people to yield valuable data. The main objective of this research is to prove the feasibility of using the concept of GWAP for the segmentation and labeling of massive amount of 3D human body scan data. The rationale behind using GWAP as a method for mesh segmentation and labeling is that the current methods use expensive, time consuming computational algorithms to accomplish this task. Furthermore, the computer algorithms are not as detailed and specific as what natural human ability can achieve in segmentation tasks. The method presented in this paper overcomes the shortcomings of computer algorithms by introducing the concept of GWAP for human model segmentation. The actual process of segmenting and labeling the mesh becomes a form of entertainment rather than a tedious process, from which segmentation data is produced as a bi-product. In addition, the natural capabilities of the human visual processing systems are harnessed to identify and label various parts of the 3D human body shape, which in turn gives more details and specificity in segmentation. The effectiveness of the proposed game play mechanism is proven by experiments conducted in this study.