Interactive control of physically-valid aerial motion: application to VR training system for gymnasts

This paper aims at proposing a new method to animate aerial motions in interactive environments while taking dynamics into account. Classical approaches are based on spacetime constraints and require a complete knowledge of the motion. However, in Virtual Reality, the user's actions are unpredictable so that such techniques cannot be used. In this paper, we deal with the simulation of gymnastic aerial motions in virtual reality. A user can directly interact with the virtual gymnast thanks to a real-time motion capture system. The user's arm motions are blended to the original aerial motions in order to verify their consequences on the virtual gymnast's performance. Hence, a user can select an initial motion, an initial velocity vector, an initial angular momentum, and a virtual character. Each of these choices has a direct influence on mechanical values such as the linear and angular momentum. We thus have developed an original method to adapt the character's poses at each time step in order to make these values compatible with mechanical laws: the angular momentum is constant during the aerial phase and the linear one is determined at take-off. Our method enables to animate up to 16 characters at 30hz on a common PC. To sum-up, our method enables to solve kinematic constraints, to retarget motion and to correct it to satisfy mechanical laws. The virtual gymnast application described in this paper is very promising to help sports-men getting some ideas which postures are better during the aerial phase for better performance.