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Automatic Animation of Human Arm Motion

Stanford, 1994


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Project Description

This research involves using path-planning algorithms from robotics to automatically generate computer animation sequences for human figures. If you would like to read more about this project in detail, see the 1994 edition of COMPUTER GRAPHICS (the conference proceedings of SIGGRAPH '94) for our group's research paper entitled Planning Motions with Intentions.

In order to demonstrate the potential for automating the animation of grasping and manipulation motions, we collaborated to produce a 2 minute short film. The sequence involves a human and a robot playing a hypothetical game of chess in a futuristic world, in which all of the motion was generated using a randomized path-planning technique.

Demonstrations

The animation below was shown at the Siggraph '94 Electronic Theater in Orlando, Florida, as well as numerous other International venues. The work is based on the inverse kinematics algoritm of Koichi Kondo, and a multi-arm manipulation planner invented by Yoshihito Koga. It is NOT a key-framed animation, rather the motions were specified at the task-level and computed automatically. Only ten intermediate goals were specified to complete the entire animation sequence. Read more about the making of ENDGAME if you are interested.

ENDGAME complete animation sequence (2:06 sec)

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Movie formats available
MPEG (without sound) (2.2 MB)
QuickTime (w/ sound) (4.6 MB)
Smaller Quicktime versions of "ENDGAME: are available here.

Screen shots from "ENDGAME"

Click on the thumbnail pictures below to see a full-size image of the actual animation frame.

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More recent results

Further research has been conducted towards designing a general framework for creating autonomous animated characters that can sense, plan, and act in a virtual world.

As a component of this research, we have devised a new path planning method that greatly improves that speed with which we can generate motions. To demonstrate, we have created an "interactive virtual chess" application in which a user can play against a virtual opponent. All of the motions necessary to move the chess pieces is generated "on-the-fly" with no pre-computation.

 

References

Y. Koga, K. Kondo, J. Kuffner, and J.C. Latombe, "Planning Motions with Intentions", Proceedings of SIGGRAPH'94 (Orlando, Florida, July 24-29, 1994). In Computer Graphics Proceedings (July, 1994), pp.395-408.


1997 - 2009 © James Kuffner, Jr.