Synthetic humans help computers understand how real people act

We are difficult for computers to understand. Our actions are sufficiently unpredictable that computer vision systems, such as those used in driverless cars, can't readily make sense of what we're doing and predict our next moves. Now fake people are helping them to understand real human behaviour. The idea is that videos and images of computer-generated bodies walking, dancing and doing cartwheels could help them learn what to look for. "Recognising what's going on in images is natural for humans. Getting computers to do the same requires a lot more effort," says Javier Romero at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany.