This paper describes algorithms for the animation of men and women performing three dynamic athletic behaviors: running, bicycling, and vaulting. We animate these behaviors using control algorithms that cause a physically realistic model to perform the desired maneuver. For example, control algorithms allow the simulated humans to maintain balance while moving their arms, to run or bicycle at a variety of speeds, and to perform a handspring vault. Algorithms for group behaviors allow a number of simulated bicyclists to ride as a group while avoiding simple patterns of obstacles. We add secondarymotion to the animations with springmass simulations of clothing driven by the rigid-body motion of the simulated human. For each simulation, we compare the computed motion to that of humans performing similar maneuvers both qualitatively through the comparison of real and simulated video images and quantitatively through the comparison of simulated and biomechanical data.

In this paper we describe an animation of a human platform diver. We simulated the motion of the diver using a dynamic model and a control system. The dynamic model is a 32 degree-of-freedom rigid body model with dynamic parameters similar to those reported in the literature for humans. The control system uses algorithms for balance, jumping, and twisting to initiate the dive, proportionalderivative servos to perform the aerial portion of the dive, and a state machine to sequence the actions throughout the dive. The motion of the simulated diver closely resembles video footage of dives performed by human athletes. The combination of dynamic simulation and a control system allowed us to animate the diver using high level commands. The control and simulation techniques presented in this paper may be useful for analysis of sports performance and for providing realistic motion for synthetic actors in computer animation and virtual environments. Keywords: Human Figure Animation, Simulatio...

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