Editorial Issue 28.6

This issue contains seven papers. In the first paper, Angel Zaldivar Pino, Manuel Gonzalez Bedia, and Francisco J. Seron from the University of Zaragoza, Spain, propose a “dynamic agent” endowed with a sensing device, a controller, and actuators to interact with the environment. The control architecture is based on ordinary differential equations with the function of modulating the stimulus signals to action signals under a sensory-motor flow. The parameter values are defined in an evolutionary process depending on the task to be performed. A series of experiments are presented to illustrate certain qualities of their model such as the adaptability to change, a highly intuitive and flexible design methodology, and a high degree of individual autonomy. In the second paper, Xin Yang, Wanchao Su, Jian Deng, and Guozhen Tan from the Dalian University of Technology in China; Xiaogang Jin from the Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; and Zhigeng Pan from the Hangzhou Normal University, China, present an innovative, animated traffic simulation method, which they designed to feature an enhanced sense of reality and diversity of traffic flows. Instead of the typical one-off initialization, their simulation method includes continuous, real trajectory data input providing an interactive control function that maximizes the characteristics of real-world traffic flows. Their fusion models represent a comprehensive integration of the interactions among real-data-driven and virtual vehicles, thus depicting accurately the irregularity of traffic flows. Test results showed that animations generated via their proposed method depict inverse and irregular vehicle driving behaviors throughout the entire traffic flow. In the third paper. Ana Lucia Cruz Ruiz, Charles Pontonnier, Jonathan Levy, and Georges Dumont from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Rennes and IRISA, France, describe a bio-inspired solution for the control of overactuated models in animation, such as musculoskeletal models. This solution consists of the extraction of muscle synergies from human experiments, followed by a control method consisting of a series of optimizations to adapt muscle parameters and synergies to match the experimental data. They apply the framework on throwing motions, and the results show that these motions can be accurately reproduced on a character with a simplified muscular structure while preserving important characteristics in the original synergies or control signals. In the fourth paper, Kan Chen from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Henry Johan from the Fraunhofer IDM@NTU, Singapore, propose an approach to interactively author the bending and twisting motions of short plants using hand gestures. Their method is based on the observations that hand motions can represent the bending and twisting motions of short plants, and using a hand to describe motions is natural and proficient for humans. They therefore use a hand as a “puppet” to author the animation of one single short plant based on transferring the motions of a hand to the motions of a short plant. They first author the global motions of the short plant, followed by the motions of its elements such as leaves and flowers. They also propose a framework to utilize the animation results to animate a field of short plants and further adjust the motion effects according to the properties of the short plants, such as rigidity. In the fifth paper, Brandon Haworth and Muhammad Usman from the York University, Toronto, Canada; Glen Berseth from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; Mahyar Khayatkhoei and Mubbasir Kapadia from the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA; and Petros Faloutsos from the York University, Toronto, Canada, present CODE: a crowd-aware computational tool for designing environments. Their system analyzes the impact of newly added environment elements on the resulting crowd flow, using current generation crowd simulators. The results of the simulation are used to provide feedback to the designer in terms of aggregate statistics and heat maps. Additionally, their system can automatically optimize the placement of environmental elements to maximize crowd flow in egress scenarios while satisfying constraints that are imposed by the designer. Using CODE, architects and environment designers can iteratively refine upon their original design to quickly accommodate the dynamic properties of crowd simulations in an interactive fashion. In the sixth paper, Jiaxu Chen, Long Zhang, Xiaoxu Li, Bo Zhang, and Zhongfu Ye, from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, describe a novel 2D shape deformation method. To realize the local control and preserve the rigidity of the shape simultaneously, they proposed the deformation method for point, skeleton, and cage handles. Their