SkillVis: A Visualization Tool for Boxing Skill Assessment

Motion analysis and visualization are crucial in sports science for sports training and performance evaluation. While primitive computational methods have been proposed for simple analysis such as postures and movements, few can evaluate the high-level quality of sports players such as their skill levels and strategies. We propose a visualization tool to help visualizing boxers' motions and assess their skill levels. Our system automatically builds a graph-based representation from motion capture data and reduces the dimension of the graph onto a 3D space so that it can be easily visualized and understood. In particular, our system allows easy understanding of the boxer's boxing behaviours, preferred actions, potential strength and weakness. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system on different boxers' motions. Our system not only serves as a tool for visualization, it also provides intuitive motion analysis that can be further used beyond sports science

사람 동작 생성을 위한 의미 분석

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 2. 이제희.One of main goals of computer-generated character animation is to reduce cost to create animated scenes. Using human motion in makes it easier to animate characters, so motion capture technology is used as a standard technique. However, it is difficult to get the desired motion because it requires a large space, high-performance cameras, actors, and a significant amount of work for post-processing. Data-driven character animation includes a set of techniques that make effective use of captured motion data. In this thesis, I introduce methods that analyze the semantics of motion data to enhance the utilization of the data. To accomplish this, various techniques in other fields are integrated so that we can understand the semantics of a unit motion clip, the implicit structure of a motion sequence, and a natural description of movements. Based upon that understanding, we can generate new animation systems. The first animation system in this thesis allows the user to generate an animation of basketball play from the tactics board. In order to handle complex basketball rule that players must follow, we use context-free grammars for motion representation. Our motion grammar enables the user to define implicit/explicit rules of human behavior and generates valid movement of basketball players. Interactions between players or between players and the environment are represented with semantic rules, which results in plausible animation. When we compose motion sequences, we rely on motion corpus storing the prepared motion clips and the transition between them. It is important to construct good motion corpus to create natural and rich animations, but it requires the efforts of experts. We introduce a semi-supervised learning technique for automatic generation of motion corpus. Stacked autoencoders are used to find latent features for large amounts of motion capture data and the features are used to effectively discover worthwhile motion clips. The other animation system uses natural language processing technology to understand the meaning of the animated scene that the user wants to make. Specifically, the script of an animated scene is used to synthesize the movements of characters. Like the sketch interface, scripts are very sparse input sources. Understanding motion allows the system to interpret abstract user input and generate scenes that meet user needs.1 Introduction 1 2 Background 8 2.1 RepresentationofHumanMovements 8 2.2 MotionAnnotation 11 2.3 MotionGrammars 12 2.4 NaturalLanguageProcessing 15 3 Motion Grammar 17 3.1 Overview 18 3.2 MotionGrammar 20 3.2.1 Instantiation, Semantics, and Plausibility 22 3.2.2 ASimpleExample 25 3.3 BasketballTacticsBoard 27 3.4 MotionSynthesis 29 3.5 Results 35 3.6 Discussion 39 4 Motion Embedding 49 4.1 Overview 50 4.2 MotionData 51 4.3 Autoencoders 52 4.3.1 Stackedautoencoders 53 4.4 MotionCorpus 53 4.4.1 Training 53 4.4.2 FindingMotionClips 55 4.5 Results 55 4.6 Discussion 57 5 Text to Animation 62 5.1 Overview 63 5.2 UnderstandingSemantics 64 5.3 ActionChains 65 5.3.1 WordEmbedding 66 5.3.2 MotionPlausibility 67 5.4 SceneGeneration 69 5.5 Results 70 5.6 Discussion 70 6 Conclusion 74 Bibliography 76 초록 100Docto

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

DigitalBeing – Using the Environment as an Expressive Medium for Dance

Dancers express their feelings and moods through gestures and body movements. We seek to extend this mode of expression by dynamically and automatically adjusting music and lighting in the dance environment to reflect the dancer’s arousal state. Our intention is to offer a space that performance artists can use as a creative tool that extends the grammar of dance. To enable the dynamic manipulation of lighting and music, the performance space will be augmented with several sensors: physiological sensors worn by a dancer to measure her arousal state, as well as pressure sensors installed in a floor mat to track the dancers’ locations and movements. Data from these sensors will be passed to a three layered architecture. Layer 1 is composed of a sensor analysis system that analyzes and synthesizes physiological and pressure sensor signals. Layer 2 is composed of intelligent systems that adapt lighting and music to portray the dancer’s arousal state. The intelligent on-stage lighting system dynamically adjusts on-stage lighting direction and color. The intelligent virtual lighting system dynamically adapts virtual lighting in the projected imagery. The intelligent music system dynamically and unobtrusively adjusts the music. Layer 3 translates the high-level adjustments made by the intelligent systems in layer 2 to appropriate lighting board, image rendering, and audio box commands. In this paper, we will describe this architecture in detail as well as the equipment and control systems used

Posture-based and Action-based Graphs for Boxing Skill Visualization

Automatic evaluation of sports skills has been an active research area. However, most of the existing research focuses on low-level features such as movement speed and strength. In this work, we propose a framework for automatic motion analysis and visualization, which allows us to evaluate high-level skills such as the richness of actions, the flexibility of transitions and the unpredictability of action patterns. The core of our framework is the construction and visualization of the posture-based graph that focuses on the standard postures for launching and ending actions, as well as the action-based graph that focuses on the preference of actions and their transition probability. We further propose two numerical indices, the Connectivity Index and the Action Strategy Index, to assess skill level according to the graph. We demonstrate our framework with motions captured from different boxers. Experimental results demonstrate that our system can effectively visualize the strengths and weaknesses of the boxers

Example Based Caricature Synthesis

The likeness of a caricature to the original face image is an essential and often overlooked part of caricature production. In this paper we present an example based caricature synthesis technique, consisting of shape exaggeration, relationship exaggeration, and optimization for likeness. Rather than relying on a large training set of caricature face pairs, our shape exaggeration step is based on only one or a small number of examples of facial features. The relationship exaggeration step introduces two definitions which facilitate global facial feature synthesis. The first is the T-Shape rule, which describes the relative relationship between the facial elements in an intuitive manner. The second is the so called proportions, which characterizes the facial features in a proportion form. Finally we introduce a similarity metric as the likeness metric based on the Modified Hausdorff Distance (MHD) which allows us to optimize the configuration of facial elements, maximizing likeness while satisfying a number of constraints. The effectiveness of our algorithm is demonstrated with experimental results

New Game Physics - Added Value for Transdisciplinary Teams

This study focused on game physics, an area of computer game design where physics is applied in interactive computer software. The purpose of the research was a fresh analysis of game physics in order to prove that its current usage is limited and requires advancement. The investigations presented in this dissertation establish constructive principles to advance game physics design. The main premise was that transdisciplinary approaches provide significant value. The resulting designs reflected combined goals of game developers, artists and physicists and provide novel ways to incorporate physics into games. The applicability and user impact of such new game physics across several target audiences was thoroughly examined. In order to explore the transdisciplinary nature of the premise, valid evidence was gathered using a broad range of theoretical and practical methodologies. The research established a clear definition of game physics within the context of historical, technological, practical, scientific, and artistic considerations. Game analysis, literature reviews and seminal surveys of game players, game developers and scientists were conducted. A heuristic categorization of game types was defined to create an extensive database of computer games and carry out a statistical analysis of game physics usage. Results were then combined to define core principles for the design of unconventional new game physics elements. Software implementations of several elements were developed to examine the practical feasibility of the proposed principles. This research prototype was exposed to practitioners (artists, game developers and scientists) in field studies, documented on video and subsequently analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of the elements on the audiences. The findings from this research demonstrated that standard game physics is a common but limited design element in computer games. It was discovered that the entertainment driven design goals of game developers interfere with the needs of educators and scientists. Game reviews exemplified the exaggerated and incorrect physics present in many commercial computer games. This “pseudo physics” was shown to have potentially undesired effects on game players. Art reviews also indicated that game physics technology remains largely inaccessible to artists. The principal conclusion drawn from this study was that the proposed new game physics advances game design and creates value by expanding the choices available to game developers and designers, enabling artists to create more scientifically robust artworks, and encouraging scientists to consider games as a viable tool for education and research. The practical portion generated tangible evidence that the isolated “silos” of engineering, art and science can be bridged when game physics is designed in a transdisciplinary way. This dissertation recommends that scientific and artistic perspectives should always be considered when game physics is used in computer-based media, because significant value for a broad range of practitioners in succinctly different fields can be achieved. The study has thereby established a state of the art research into game physics, which not only offers other researchers constructive principles for future investigations, but also provides much-needed new material to address the observed discrepancies in game theory and digital media design