In Arbrea Labs, two of our co-founders and tech advisors Markus Gross and Thabo Beeler have won Sci-Tech Oscars/Academy Awards for their work on the Medusa Facial Capture System. In our previous blog, our CEO Endri Dibra talked about reconstructing digital human avatars from single images during his tenure at Disney Research and PhD at Computer Graphics Laboratory from ETH Zurich. It later materialized into real-world application, together with CTO Ben Huber. The culmination of our strong tech talent as a company originated with a common interest in digital human avatars.
Marvel Studios, 2018
Understandably, digital human avatars have been popular in the entertainment and communications fields. We’ve seen movie characters upgrade their stiff, “shark-like” facial expressions for believable emotions. If you’re a fan of the Marvel series, you might have recalled that against the odds, there were moments of audience response towards Thanos at the end of Infinity War generated by his authentic, poignant moments of contemplation and defeat. This would not have been the case had the character appeared and remained flat.
Medicine, augmented reality and human avatars
Arbrea Labs’ focus is on medicine, surgery and technology. While not exactly the entertainment world, it holds value on the notion of the reduction of stress and pain alleviation, especially among breast cancer patients. This was made possible by internally conducting rapid prototyping and reconstructing of digital human avatars from mobile devices. Through convincing visual performance and delivery of our products using 3D, Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence, we created our surgeon app.
The main function and purpose of the surgeon app is to visualize surgical treatments directly on the patient’s body. It serves as a means of communication, education and decision-making between patients and surgeons. These avatars are used for various applications which we have launched with breast augmentation simulations.
Recently, Arbrea Labs has earned an award from the ICT for Innovation of the Year. While we’re indeed a young company, we have managed, within such a short time, to accumulate the pinnacle of our years of research. However, we’re also continuously striving for improvements. It is our greatest honour that we have been fortunate enough to have our excellent tech team, talented advisors and advising surgeons, who have been generous with their time and feedback. We hope to serve not only those in the medical profession but also the patients who are seeking to improve their lives for themselves and their families. You are, after all, the real heroes of this journey and deserve to be awarded.
