An Animation Framework for Continuous Interaction with Reactive Virtual Humans

We present a complete framework for animation of Reactive Virtual Humans that offers a mixed animation paradigm: control of different body parts switches between keyframe animation, procedural animation and physical simulation, depending on the requirements of the moment. This framework implements novel techniques to support real-time continuous interaction. It is demonstrated on our interactive Virtual Conductor

Fuzzy Constraint Satisfaction

In this paper the issue of soft constraint satisfaction is discussed from a fuzzy set theoretical point of view. A fuzzy constraint is considered as a fuzzy relation. Different possible definitions for the degree of joint satisfaction of a set of fuzzy constraints are given, covering specific other soft constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) types such a partial and hierarchical CSP. It is shown that the classical CSP solving heuristics based on variable and value evaluations can be generalised and used to guide the solution construction process for solving fuzzy CSPs, and that the heuristic search can be replaced by branch-and-bound search. The solution process is illustrated with an example from the CSP literature. Finally, research issues are discussed. 1. Introduction In the recent years there has been a growing interest in soft constraint satisfaction. In general, in a soft CSP not all the given constraints need to be satisfied --- either because all of them cannot be met, theoret..

Take a Stroll in Another World

Another World II is a print by the famous Dutch artist M. C. Escher, depicting a cube with arch-like openings on each side. What makes the print interesting is that the depicted views in the arches are inconsistent, leaving the spectator puzzled as to the “impossible assembly” of views from different perspectives. In our work we invite the reader – and more so, the user of our software – to explore the strange geometry of this work by flying through a virtual Another World. The rendering of the inconsistent views is achieved by applying Portal Rendering. We point out the novelty of our work with respect to previous 3D computer models of different “impossible worlds” by M. C. Escher. We also suggest potential application contexts beyond the straightforward 3D reconstruction of Another World

The Jovial, the Reserved and the Robot

We discuss a language, GESTYLE, to define markup tags representing meaningful behaviors of ECAs with both non-verbal style and speech style explicitly given. In the same framework, these tags can then be used to markup text and hence animate the ECA

Constraint Satisfaction Problems

In this section we discuss solving constraint satisfaction problems with evolutionary algorithms. We set up a formal framework by defining the notions free optimization problem, constrained optimization problem and constraint satisfaction problem. We note that constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) lack an optimization component that is necessary for evolutionary problem solvers. Therefore we discuss different ways of solving CSPs in two stages: applying a suitable problem transformation and solving the transformed problem. C5.7.1 Introduction Applying evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for solving constraint satisfaction problems is interesting from two points of view. On the one hand, since a general CSP is known to be NP-complete (Mackworth 1977), one cannot expect that an effective classical deterministic search algorithm can be forged to solve CSPs. There has been a continuos effort to construct effective algorithms for specific CSPs, and to characterise the difficulty of problem cla..

On the timing of gestures of a Virtual Physiotherapist

A Reactive Virtual Trainer is a virtual human capable to demonstrate physical exercises, to monitor the perform-ance of the user and react in speech, both addressing the correctness of the motion, the overall performance and the motivation of the user. In this paper we focus on the timing of the simple exercises motions (called gestures). We discuss the subtle requirements on synchronizing motion to speech and other acoustic modalities, and the proper timing of the stages of the gesture. We outline our implemented demo, to visualize and to experiment with the different planning and timing strategies. Finally, we talk about further work concerning motion models and real-time adaptive planning for our RVT application