Software laboratory for physical based human body animation

Abstract

New applications in virtual reality, robotics and medicine are impelling the dynamics-based methods for the human body simulation. The dynamics allows to establish global solutions of motion in virtual autonomous agents, in the locomotion of biped robots and in the development of intelligent prosthesis for motor disabilities recovery. This paper presents the conceptual design of a software laboratory for the study, development and verification of dynamictechniques of motion control and human body representation. The main idea of this work is the use, as basic pattern of motion, of the direct solution of very simple dynamic models governed by a finite state machine. These models are developed, specializing, linked and solved using empirical laws of the real movement. The visualization improved the final result, applying kinematics over the basic pattern of motion. As an example of laboratory application, this paper describes the previous work, developments and results obtained in the simulation of human locomotion. The whole set of software tools, derived from the laboratory concept design, has been completely developed and implemented. These tools could be modified and customized in some of the suggested future works.