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		     B O S T O N   U N I V E R S I T Y
                                       
			Computer Science Department
                                       
			    C O L L O Q U I U M
                                       
			  Friday, March 21, 1997
                                       
				  3:00 pm
                                       
		  (Coffee served at 2:30 in Room MCS 137)

			       Room MCS 135

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      Simulation of Leaping, Tumbling, Landing, and Balancing Humans

			       Wayne Wooten
		     College of Computing, GVU Center
		      Georgia Institute of Technology
	     http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/WLW.html


 The demand for animation in entertainment and advertising has grown
 rapidly as animation systems have become more powerful and easier to
 use. However, animation is still expensive and time consuming to
 produce with character animation remaining as one of the most
 challenging problems. In this talk I will address the problem of
 creating physically realistic and natural-looking motion for
 articulated human figures.

  My approach to animating articulated human figures involves
 simulating a rigid-body dynamics model based on the physical
 properties of the human body. Simulation ensures that the motion of
 the animated figure is physically realistic within the limitations of
 the model. Control systems compute the joint torques that are required
 to complete the desired tasks in a natural-looking fashion. In this
 talk, I will concentrate on the development of "basis" control systems
 that can be used to accomplish basic movement tasks such as leaping,
 tumbling, landing, and balancing. Complex motions like diving and
 vaulting can then be generated by combining the basis controllers. I
 will demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by showing
 animations of a number of human athletic activities.

Host: Prof. Stan Sclaroff

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For colloquium info, including directions, see http://www.cs.bu.edu/colloquium
     For more information contact Prof. David Yates <djy@cs.bu.edu>
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