Ilmaisuvoimaisten koko kehon animaatioiden tuottaminen liikekaappauksen avulla

Human motions such as walking or waving a hand can be performed in many different styles. The way the perceived styles are interpreted can vary depending on the context of the motions. The styles can be described as emotional states such as aggressiveness or sadness, or as physical attributes such as being tense or slow. This thesis studies synthesis of expressive styles and real-time interaction between autonomous characters in order to enable controllable performance synthesis. Presented research relies on motion capture as it enables reproduction of realistic human motion in off-line animations, and recording expressive performances with talented actors. The captured motions can then be used as inputs for several motion synthesis methods that enable real-time animations with actions that can adapt to changing surroundings. While the main field of this thesis is computer animation, building an understanding of motion style is also related to fields of perception, psychology and semantics. Furthermore, to recognize and to enable control of created styles, methodology from the field of pattern recognition has been used. In practice, the research includes implementations and evaluations of proof-of-concept systems, and questionnaires where varying motion styles have been rated and described. Both quantitative analysis of answers of the questionnaires, and visualizations of the data have been made to form a qualitative understanding of motion style.In the context of single character motion, the main result is in enabling accurate verbal control of motion styles. This was found to be possible when the styles are modeled as continuous attributes that are allowed to vary independently, and when individual styles are numerically defined through comparisons between motions. In the context of expressive interaction between characters, the research builds on the observation that motions can be interpreted as expressive behaviors when portrayed as reactions to an action. The main contribution here is a new method for authoring expressive interaction through recorded actions and reactions. The results of the dissertation are useful for development of virtual characters as many existing systems do not take full advantage of bodily motions as an expressive medium. More specifically, the presented methods enable creating characters that can interact fluidly while still allowing the expressiveness to be controlled.Ihmisen liikkeitä kuten kävelyä tai käden heilutusta voi esittää monella tyylillä, joiden tulkinta voi vaihdella riippuen siitä millaisessa tilanteessa liikkeet esitetään. Liikkeiden tyylit voidaan tulkita tunnetiloina, kuten aggressiivisuutena tai surullisuutena, tai fyysisinä ominaisuuksina, kuten jäykkyytenä tai hitautena. Tässä väitöksessä on tutkittu liikkeiden tuottamista ja reaaliaikaista vuorovaikutusta autonomisten hahmojen välillä, jotta voidaan luoda ilmeikkäitä kehollisia esityksiä. Esitetty tutkimus hyödyntää liikkeenkaappausta, koska se mahdollistaa todenmukaisten liikkeiden toistamisen animaatioelokuvissa, ja ilmeikkäiden esitysten tallentamisen. Kaapattuja liikkeitä voidaan käyttää lähtömateriaalina liikesynteesimetodeille, jotka mahdollistavat reaaliaikaisen animaation ja liikkeiden mukautumisen muuttuvaan ympäristöön. Väitöksen päätutkimusala on tietokoneanimaatio, mutta tyylien ymmärtämiseksi on käytetty menetelmiä myös havaintotutkimuksen, psykologian ja semantiikan aloilta. Tyylien tunnistamiseksi ja säädeltävyyden mahdollistamiseksi käytössä on myös menetelmiä, jotka liittyvät hahmontunnistukseen. Käytännössä tutkimus sisältää esimerkkijärjestelmien toteuttamista ja arviointia. Lisäksi on tehty kyselyitä, joissa osallistujat ovat arvioineet tyylejä ja kuvailleet niitä omin sanoin. Kyselyiden vastauksia on analysoitu määrällisesti, ja dataa on visualisoitu laadullisen kuvan luomiseksi tyyleistä. Yksittäisen hahmon tapauksessa päätulos on, että on mahdollista säätää tyylejä kielellisten kuvausten perusteella, kun eri tyylejä käsitellään jatkuvina ominaisuuksina, joiden annetaan vaihdella toisistaan riippumattomasti, ja kun yksittäiset tyylit määritellään numeerisesti liikkeiden vertailuihin pohjautuen. Hahmojen vuorovaikutuksen tapauksessa liike voidaan tulkita ilmeikkääksi, jos se esitetään vastauksena tiettyyn toimintaan. Päätulos tässä yhteydessä on uusi menetelmä luoda ilmeikästä vuorovaikutusta näyteltyjen liikkeiden ja niiden herättämien reaktioiden pohjalta. Väitöksen tuloksia voidaan käyttää hyväksi kehitettäessä animaatiohahmoja ilmaisuvoimaisemmiksi kehollisten tyylien avulla, mihin useat olemassa olevat järjestelmät eivät anna tukea. Esitetyillä menetelmillä voi tuottaa hahmoja, jotka voivat olla sujuvassa vuorovaikutuksessa samalla kun niiden ilmeikkyyttä säädellään

Kinetic predictors of spectators' segmentation of a live dance performance

International audienceWe present a pilot study that explores the relation between acceleration paaerns of dance movements and the temporal segmentation of the dance reported by spectators during a live performance. Our data set consists of recorded accelerations from two 7 minutes long duo dances that were annotated by 12 spectators in real-time. e annotations were indications of perceived starts and endings in the dance. We were able to create an acceleration based predictor that has a signiicant correlation with the pooled subjective annotations. Our approach can be useful in analysis of improvised dance where the segmentation cannot rely on repetitive paaerns of steps. We also present suggestions for future development of acceleration based dance analysis

A review of empirical evidence on different uncanny valley hypotheses: Support for perceptual mismatch as one road to the valley of eeriness

VK: Takala, T.The uncanny valley hypothesis, proposed already in the 1970s, suggests that almost but not fully humanlike artificial characters will trigger a profound sense of unease. This hypothesis has become widely acknowledged both in the popular media and scientific research. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for the hypothesis has remained inconsistent. In the present article, we reinterpret the original uncanny valley hypothesis and review empirical evidence for different theoretically motivated uncanny valley hypotheses. The uncanny valley could be understood as the naïve claim that any kind of human-likeness manipulation will lead to experienced negative affinity at close-to-realistic levels. More recent hypotheses have suggested that the uncanny valley would be caused by artificial–human categorization difficulty or by a perceptual mismatch between artificial and human features. Original formulation also suggested that movement would modulate the uncanny valley. The reviewed empirical literature failed to provide consistent support for the naïve uncanny valley hypothesis or the modulatory effects of movement. Results on the categorization difficulty hypothesis were still too scarce to allow drawing firm conclusions. In contrast, good support was found for the perceptual mismatch hypothesis. Taken together, the present review findings suggest that the uncanny valley exists only under specific conditions. More research is still needed to pinpoint the exact conditions under which the uncanny valley phenomenon manifests itself.Peer reviewe

Pregnancy mediated improvement of rheumatoid arthritis

To investigate pregnancy related changes of rheumatoid factor (RF) isotypes and anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA) and their association with disease activity and therapy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Evaluation of smell and taste in patients with Wegener's granulomatosis

Although a reduced olfactory/gustatory function affects patients in all parts of life, this problem has not received much attention in Wegener's granulomatosis (WG). The aim of this study was to assess the smell/taste function of WG patients. Demographic data of 16 WG patients (9 males, 7 females) were obtained. They all subjectively assessed their taste/smell function on visual analogue scale. Olfactory/gustatory functions of the patients were tested with 'Sniffin' Sticks and 'Taste' strips, respectively. The results were then compared with those from sex and age-matched control group (n = 16) and normative data. WG patients subjectively assessed their olfactory (p = 0.03) and gustatory (p = 0.02) function to be lower than control group. All the olfactory scores (odour identification, odour discrimination and threshold) in both genders were significantly below the scores in the control group. WG patients were hyposmic. For taste (total taste score, as well as scores for the qualities sweet, sour, salty and bitter), WG patients did not significantly differ from controls and were normogeusic. However, the gustatory scores showed the tendency of reduction as compared to the control group. In conclusion, WG patients truly suffer from olfactory/taste dysfunction, but this is worse with olfaction. It is, therefore, imperative that physicians should make their patients to be aware of these sensory dysfunctions and educate them on methods to cope with it for better quality of life