Spacetime Control of Linked Figures

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Publication Type technical report
School or College College of Engineering
Department Computing, School of
Creator Cohen, Michael F.
Title Spacetime Control of Linked Figures
Date 1992-06
Description This dissertation describes the development of techniques to automate the creation of physically-based, goal-directed motion of synthetic creatures, More specifically, the research concentrates on developing an underlying mathematical representation for constraints and objectives imposed on a creature's motion, and explores possibilities for user assistance in the numerical solution of the optimization problem thus defined. The constraint equations and objectives are functions of space and time, or spacetime, and thus impose relationships across or between points in time.; In addition to the development of an interactive user interface to spacetime constraints, three other primary innovations are introduced, (1) The subdivision of spacetime into discrete pieces, or spacetime windows, over which subproblems can be formulated and solved. (2) The use of approximation techniques for the time dependent functions of a creature's degrees us freedom. (3) The use of hybrid symbolic/numerical methods to solve the constrained optimization problem. Other innovations over earlier work include the ability to specify inequality and conditional constraints.; Creatures, within the context of this dissertation, are restricted to assemblies of rigid links connected by joints defining a set of degrees of freedom. (The problem of collision detection and response are not addressed. The special structure of the problems related to physically based modelling of such creatures, as well as the recent development of symbolic algebraic languages, make it possible to develop hybrid symbolic and numeric techniques to solve the complex constrained optimization problems that arise in this work. Symbolic reduction of the degrees optimization to obtain a solution. A language based interface to both the symbolic and numerical computation is described These processes are linked through a graphical user interface that provides both high and low-level interaction with and inspection of the optimization process and the resulting animation. Implementation issues related to the development of the Spacetime Windows system are discussed. Experiments with a variety of simulated creatures, constraint types, and objectives are also reported.
Type Text
Subject computer animation; spacetime control; animated figures; creature motion
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Cohen, M. E. (1992). Spacetime control of linked figures.
Series University of Utah Computer Science Technical Report
Relation is Part of ARPANET
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 69,526,359 bytes
File Name Cohen-Spacetme_Control.pdf
Conversion Specifications Original scanned with Kirtas 2400 and saved as 400 ppi uncompressed TIFF. PDF generated by Adobe Acrobat Pro X for CONTENTdm display
ARK ark:/87278/s6m63mjx
Setname ir_computersa
ID 97747
Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6m63mjx
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