🚀 go-pugleaf

UC SANTA CRUZ:		Computer & Information Sciences and
			Computer Engineering

CIS Faculty Recruitment Seminar:   Thursday, February 27, 10:30-11:30 am
				   Room 330 Applied Sciences Bldg.
				   Refreshments at 10:15

Jessica K. Hodgins, from IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, will speak on:

"Animation of Dynamic Behaviors"


Computer animations of people, animals, and robots often produce motions that
appear unnatural.  We have explored one possible solution to this problem:
applying control algorithms to physically realistic models of the systems
that we would like to animate.  The control algorithms regulate the motion
of the limbs by monitoring the state of the system, the environment, and
user-defined goals and computing forces and torques to be applied at the
joints.  The equations of motion for the rigid body models are numerically
integrated and control torques are applied at each simulation time step.
The combination of control algorithms and physical simulation allow the
animator to control an animation at a high level and to achieve realistic
results without an understanding of the underlying forces and torques or
the motion of the individual joints.  We have implemented computer animations
of a biped robot, a quadruped robot, a person on a swing, a unicyclist, and
a juggler.  Although the use of control permitted a variety of physically
realistic animated behavior to be generated with limited human intervention,
the process of designing the control algorithms was not automated and the
control algorithms were designed by hand using a set of simple principles.
Automating the design of control algorithms is a challenge that lies ahead.