G&V: Medium: Collaborative Research: Contact-Based Human Motion Acquisition and Synthesis

到目前为止，动作捕捉技术受到三个主要限制。首先，硬件设备受限、笨重且昂贵。其次，大多数技术只记录运动的运动学信息，而不是潜在的动态特性或控制机制。第三，目前的技术无法捕捉主体与环境之间的相互作用。在没有接触信息的情况下，对包含复杂接触现象的运动进行重构几乎是不可能的。本课题开发了一种新的运动采集和重建技术，解决了上述三个问题。这项新技术结合了力传感器和单个摄像机，可以在不受约束的情况下重建全身姿势、关节扭矩和接触力。与昂贵的实验室设备相比，该系统由一对低成本、非侵入式力感鞋和单个消费级摄像机组成，可用于获取实验室中难以捕捉的运动。这种采集技术通过利用大量真实世界的接触数据，实现了运动控制器的新设计。该研究还为智能和高效的运动规划开发了新的数据表示和新算法，并通过模拟人体在新颖和不可预测的环境中执行具有挑战性的平衡活动来评估开发的运动控制器。该项目与佐治亚理工学院和德克萨斯农工大学的教育部门紧密结合。这个项目的研究很好地解决了计算机图形学中重要的现实问题。该项目的成果将影响视频游戏、运动训练、远程医疗、双足机器人和虚拟角色等领域的研究。

To date, motion capture technologies suffer from three major limitations. First, the hardware devices are restrictive, cumbersome, and expensive. Second, most techniques only record the kinematic information of the movement, rather than underlying dynamic properties or control mechanisms. Third, the current technique fails to capture the interaction between the subject and the environment. Without the information of contacts, reconstructing motion that consists of complex contact phenomena is nearly impossible. This project develops a new motion acquisition and reconstruction technique that solves all three problems aforementioned. The new technique combines the force sensors and a single video camera to reconstruct full-body poses, joint torques, and contact forces in an unconstrained setting. In contrast to expensive lab equipment, the proposed system consists of a pair of low-cost, non-intrusive force-sensing shoes and a single consumer-level video camera that can be used to acquire motions difficult to capture in the lab. This acquisition technology enables new design of motion controllers by leveraging a large amount of real-world contact data. The research also develops new data representations and novel algorithms for intelligent and efficient motion planning and evaluates the developed motion controllers by simulating a human figure performing challenging balanced activities in a novel and unpredicted environment. The project is tightly integrated with education components in both Georgia Tech and Texas A&M. The research of this project lends itself well to solve important real-world problems for computer graphics. The results from this project would impact research in video gaming, sports training, remote health care, biped robots, and virtual characters, etc.