Dynamic Motion Control of Articulated Figures

Dynamics is becoming an increasingly popular method for producing realistic animation. While the motion of simple objects such as blocks and spheres is easily controlled using this technique, applying dynamics to articulated figures such as humans presents two major difficulties. The first is specifying the motion in a language familiar to the animator. Animators want to work with a natural motion language rather than directly entering the forces and torques required for a particular motion. The onus should be on the animation system to translate high-level motion commands into the necessary forces and torques. The second issue involves controlling the figure's motion. What magnitude and combination of force and torque is required to execute a specific motion within a fixed time interval?

My research in this area has focused on issues related to articulated figure animation and motion control. I have built an animation system designed to dynamically control articulated figure motion by performing interpolations along quaternion curves. This system generates motion found in ballroom dancing. Motion sequences are entered using an easy to learn, high-level, ballroom dance notation language. The system decomposes these motion sequences into series of primitive movements and activates a motion control model to execute each movement within an animator-specified time interval.

University of Alberta

Computing Science

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