A Simple Kinematic Model of a Human Body for Virtual Environments

Abstract

We developed a simple kinematic model of a human body for real-time visualization applications in graphical virtual environments. For practical reasons a reduced number of active markers in optical measurements were employed to assess the values of joint variables, which caused computational issues in the configurations of the model that involved kinematic singularities. A method of handling the singularities by using simple algorithms is presented, enabling smooth and natural-appearing movements of the virtual figure without significantly affecting the natural ranges of human-like motion. The applicability of the model is demonstrated by a virtual mirror – a virtual reality application for real-time visualization of body movements enabling a visual feedback – which is useful in medical and performance studies.