Dynamical Stability and Synchronization in Character Animation

Dynamical Stability and Synchronization in Character Animation

Research Area:

Neural and Computational Principles of Action and Social Processing

Researchers:

Albert Mukovskiy Martin A. Giese;

Collaborators:

A. Park
  

Description:

An important domain of the application of dynamical systems in computer animation is the simulation of autonomous and collective behavior of many characters, e.g. in crowd animation. Some work in this domain has been inspired by observations in biology showing that coordinated behavior of large groups of agents, such as flocks of birds, can be modeled at an emergent behavior that results from the dynamic interactions between individual agents, without requiring a central mechanism that ensures coordination. The dynamical stability properties of such systems have rarely been addressed due to the complexity of the underlying dynamics. This makes it interesting to develop methods for the design of the stability of such systems.

The goal of this project is to introduce a novel framework for the analysis and design of the stability properties of systems for interactive character animation. In collaboration with J.-J. E. Slotine (M.I.T.) we introduce Contraction Theory as new theoretical approach that permits a treatment of the dynamical properties of networks of coupled nonlinear dynamical elements. We analyze the stability conditions for the coordinated behavior of crowds, including synchronized walking, simultaneous navigation of the formation of ordered groups.

 

 

 

Demos:

https://goo.gl/6Anoc8

https://goo.gl/6Jwgfp 

 

Publications

Mukovskiy, A., Slotine, J.-J. & Giese, M. A. (2013). Dynamically stable control of articulated crowds. Journal of Computational Science, 4(4), 304-310. [More] 
Mukovskiy, A., Slotine, J. J. & Giese, M. A. (2011). Analysis and design of the dynamical stability of collective behavior in crowds. Skala V. (ed): Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision 2011(WSCG2011), Jan.31-Febr.3, 2011, Plzen, Czech Republic. Journal of WSCG, 19(1-3), 69-76. [More] 
Mukovskiy, A., Slotine, J.-J. & Giese, M. A. (2010). Design of the Dynamic Stability Properties of the Collective Behavior of Articulated Bipeds. Proceedings of 10th IEEE-RAS Int. Conference on Humanoid Robots,( Humanoids 2010) December 6-8, 2010, Nashville, TN, USA. pp. 66-73. In press in special issue of IEEE Journal on Robotics and Automation. [More] 
Mukovskiy, A., Slotine, J.-J. & Giese, M. A. (2010). Analysis of the global dynamical stability of crowd navigation applying Contraction Theory. In: Electronic Proceedings of Workshop on Crowd Simulation, 23rd Int. Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents (CASA 2010), May 31-June 2, 2010, Saint-Malo, France. [More] 
Mukovskiy, A., Slotine, J.-J. & Giese, M. A. (2010). Contraction theory as method for the analysis and the design of stability of collective behavior in crowds. In: Electronic Proc. IADIS Int. Conference on Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing (CGVCVIP 2010) 27-29 July,2010 Freiburg, Germany, 47-56. [More]