Converting Sequences of Human Volumes into Kinematic Motion

We present an approach for producing articulated motion for human from a sequence of 3D points forming the volume of a human. In our approach, we use an existing voxel carving technique for collecting point volumes consisting of a single individual. We propose a volume-to-posture procedure based on the estimation of a skeleton curve. A skeleton curve is a underlying “wire” structure for the volume is approximated using a technique we developed, called nonlinear spherical shells. Nonlinear spherical shells uses Isomap, a nonlinear dimension reduction function, with clustering, and interpolation to find points for the skeleton curve of the captured volume. Using the volume and the skeleton curve, we find rigid bodies for the volume that conform to a given hierarchy and convert the configuration of these bodies into a kinematic posture.