Carsim is a system that creates automatically animated 3D scenes from written texts. Carsim uses language processing as well as visualization techniques and is for now restricted to car accidents.

Carsim's Pipeline

Carsim creates animated images from text. The image generation is a two-step process. First, the language processing module extracts information from the text that describe the roads, the vehicles, and the actions. It produces an intermediate representation that serves as input to the visualizer. In a second step, the visualizer synthesizes a 3D symbolic world where it recreates the accident.

Texts ---->	Templates ---->	Images
Véhicule B venant de ma gauche, je me trouve dans le carrefour, à faible vitesse environ 40 km/h, quand le véhicule B, percute mon véhicule, et me refuse la priorité à droite. Le premier choc atteint mon aile arrière gauche, sous le choc, et à cause de la chaussée glissante, mon véhicule dérape, et percute la protection métallique d'un arbre, d'où un second choc frontal.	// Static Objects STATIC [ ROAD TREE ] // Dynamic Objects DYNAMIC [ VEHICLE [ ID = véhicule_b; INITDIRECTION = east; CHAIN [ EVENT [ KIND = driving_forward;

A Text in English

Carsim's latest version is for Swedish. We implemented early prototypes for French and English. Here is an accident description from the National transportation safety board (www.ntsb.gov):

About 10:30 a.m. on October 21, 1999, in Schoharie County, New York, a Kinnicutt Bus Company school bus was transporting 44 students, 5 to 9 years old, and 8 adults on an Albany City School No. 18 field trip. The bus was traveling north on State Route 30A as it approached the intersection with State Route 7, which is about 1.5 miles east of Central Bridge, New York. Concurrently, an MVF Construction Company dump truck, towing a utility trailer, was traveling west on State Route 7. The dump truck was occupied by the driver and a passenger. As the bus approached the intersection, it failed to stop as required and was struck by the dump truck. Seven bus passengers sustained serious injuries; 28 bus passengers and the truckdriver received minor injuries. Thirteen bus passengers, the busdriver, and the truck passenger were uninjured. The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the school bus driver's failure to stop for the stop sign due to his degraded performance or lapse of attention as a result of factors associated with aging or his medical condition or both.

Its schematic representation

and Carsim's visualization of it

Acknowledgments

Carsim was funded by the Vinnova program: Språkteknologi