Virtual Environments

Animated characters are needed to play the role of teachers or guides, teammates or competitors, or just to provide a source of interesting motion in virtual environments. For a virtual environment to be compelling, the characters must have a wide variety of complex and interesting behaviors and must be responsive to the actions of the user. The difficulty of constructing such synthetic characters currently hinders the development of these environments, particularly when realism is required. The following research projects utilize dynamic simulations as a source of realistic character motion to improve the suitability of physically simulated characters for virtual environments.

Group Behaviors

Neither autonomous mobile robots nor their simulated counterparts in virtual environments move as quickly and adeptly as players on a basketball court, bicyclists in a race, or young children playing tag in the backyard. This project explores the capabilities of dynamic simulations that can hop or bicycle to navigate as a coordinated group around obstacles and along uneven terrain.

Dynamic Simulations in Virtual Environments

Although the presence of autonomous simulated characters adds greatly to the visual realism of a scene, we are just beginning to develop algorithms that will improve the interactive appeal of the environment by providing these synthetic actors with behaviors inspired by humans and animals. This project explores the use of high-level control algorithms to create real-time interactive environments populated with groups of dynamically simulated characters.

Simulation Levels of Detail

Physical simulations of systems with significant dynamics often require the full computational power of powerful microprocessors. These limitations have prevented dramatic demonstrations of multiagent virtual environments. This project uses physical simulations with varying complexity to quickly generate the motion for characters in a virtual environment.

Project Members

Jessica K. Hodgins Faculty Advisor
jkh@cc.gatech.edu
David Brogan Graduate Student
dbrogan@cc.gatech.edu
Ronald Metoyer Graduate Student
metoyer@cc.gatech.edu
Debbie Carlson Graduate Student
debbie@cc.gatech.edu
Marcia Riley Graduate Student
mriley@cc.gatech.edu

Questions or comments? Email jkh+www@cc.gatech.edu.