Animation planning for virtual characters cooperation

This paper presents an approach to automatically compute animations for virtual (human-like and robot) characters cooperating to move bulky objects in cluttered environments. The main challenge is to deal with 3D collision avoidance while preserving the believability of the agent's behaviors. To accomplish the coordinated task, a geometric and kinematic decoupling of the system is proposed. This decomposition enables us to plan a collision-free path for a reduced system, then to animate locomotion and grasping behaviors independently, and finally to automatically tune the animation to avoid residual collisions. These three steps are applied consecutively to synthesize an animation. The different techniques used, such as probabilistic path planning, locomotion controllers, inverse kinematics and path planning for closed kinematic chains are explained, and the way to integrate them into a single scheme is described.

[1]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Real-Time Inverse Kinematics Techniques for Anthropomorphic Limbs , 2000, Graph. Model..

[2]  Daniel Thalmann,et al.  Computer Animation for Virtual Humans , 1998, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[3]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Inverse kinematics positioning using nonlinear programming for highly articulated figures , 1994, TOGS.

[4]  Nancy M. Amato,et al.  A Kinematics-Based Probabilistic Roadmap Method for Closed Chain Systems , 2001 .

[5]  Katsu Yamane,et al.  Natural Motion Animation through Constraining and Deconstraining at Will , 2003, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[6]  Jean-Claude Latombe,et al.  Planning motions with intentions , 1994, SIGGRAPH.

[7]  D. Thalmann,et al.  Planning collision-free reaching motions for interactive object manipulation and grasping , 2008, SIGGRAPH '08.

[8]  Richard E. Parent,et al.  Computer animation - algorithms and techniques , 2012 .

[9]  Zoran Popovic,et al.  Motion warping , 1995, SIGGRAPH.

[10]  Jean-Paul Laumond,et al.  A motion capture-based control-space approach for walking mannequins: Research Articles , 2006 .

[11]  James J. Kuffner,et al.  Goal-Directed Navigation for Animated Characters Using Real-Time Path Planning and Control , 1998, CAPTECH.

[12]  Lydia E. Kavraki,et al.  Probabilistic roadmaps for path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces , 1996, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[13]  Ken-ichi Anjyo,et al.  Fourier principles for emotion-based human figure animation , 1995, SIGGRAPH.

[14]  M. Renaud,et al.  A SIMPLIFIED INVERSE KINEMATIC MODEL CALCULATION METHOD FOR ALL 6R TYPE MANIPULATORS , 2000 .

[15]  Lydia E. Kavraki,et al.  A probabilistic roadmap approach for systems with closed kinematic chains , 1999, Proceedings 1999 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.99CH36288C).

[16]  Florent Lamiraux,et al.  From Paths to Trajectories for Multi-body Mobile Robots , 1997, ISER.

[17]  Katsu Yamane,et al.  Synthesizing animations of human manipulation tasks , 2004, ACM Trans. Graph..

[18]  Jean-Paul Laumond,et al.  A motion capture‐based control‐space approach for walking mannequins , 2006, Comput. Animat. Virtual Worlds.

[19]  Petros Faloutsos,et al.  Composable controllers for physics-based character animation , 2001, SIGGRAPH.

[20]  S. LaValle.  Rapidly-exploring random trees : a new tool for path planning , 1998 .

[21]  Katsu Yamane,et al.  Synthesizing animations of human manipulation tasks , 2004, SIGGRAPH 2004.

[22]  Ronan Boulic,et al.  An inverse kinematics architecture enforcing an arbitrary number of strict priority levels , 2004, The Visual Computer.

[23]  Thierry Siméon,et al.  Visibility-based probabilistic roadmaps for motion planning , 2000, Adv. Robotics.

[24]  Aaron Hertzmann,et al.  Style machines , 2000, SIGGRAPH 2000.

[25]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Simulating humans: computer graphics animation and control , 1993 .

[26]  Bruce Blumberg,et al.  Multi-level direction of autonomous creatures for real-time virtual environments , 1995, SIGGRAPH.

[27]  Sung Yong Shin,et al.  Planning biped locomotion using motion capture data and probabilistic roadmaps , 2003, TOGS.

[28]  Ken Perlin,et al.  Real Time Responsive Animation with Personality , 1995, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[29]  Jean-Paul Laumond,et al.  Robot Motion Planning and Control , 1998 .

[30]  B. Faverjon,et al.  Probabilistic Roadmaps for Path Planning in High-Dimensional Con(cid:12)guration Spaces , 1996 .

[31]  L. Shepp,et al.  OPTIMAL PATHS FOR A CAR THAT GOES BOTH FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS , 1990 .

[32]  Jean-Claude Latombe,et al.  Robot motion planning , 1970, The Kluwer international series in engineering and computer science.

[33]  G. Swaminathan.  Robot Motion Planning , 2006 .

[34]  Thierry Siméon,et al.  Probabilistic motion planning for parallel mechanisms , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[35]  Thierry Siméon,et al.  Eurographics/siggraph Symposium on Computer Animation (2003) Visual Simulation of Ice Crystal Growth , 2022 .

[36]  Lucas Kovar,et al.  Motion Graphs , 2002, ACM Trans. Graph..

[37]  Jean-Paul Laumond,et al.  Animation planning for virtual characters cooperation , 2006, TOGS.

[38]  Michael F. Cohen,et al.  Verbs and Adverbs: Multidimensional Motion Interpolation , 1998, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[39]  Koichi Kondo,et al.  Inverse Kinematics of a Human Arm , 1994 .

[40]  Zvi Shiller,et al.  Planning motion patterns of human figures using a multi-layered grid and the dynamics filter , 2001, Proceedings 2001 ICRA. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.01CH37164).

[41]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Real-time reach planning for animated characters using hardware acceleration , 2003, Proceedings 11th IEEE International Workshop on Program Comprehension.

[42]  Norman I. Badler,et al.  Virtual humans for validating maintenance procedures , 2002, CACM.

[43]  Maja J. Matarić,et al.  Planning the Sequencing of Movement Primitives , 2004 .