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From: nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle)
Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Re: creating 3D motion files of bipeds walking, etc
Message-ID: <18789@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 28 Jun 90 19:08:59 GMT
References: <1N945P5@xds2.ferranti.com> <4340@sage.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: /usr2/dhawk/RN/organization
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      There are several basic approaches.  How much money have you got?

      First, there's the VPL DataSuit (tm).  This contraption is an 
instrumented wetsuit, with angle measurement at all major body joints
and position measurement for the back and head.  Not useful for large
movements; the umbilical tether is big, heavy, and fragile.  Contact
VPL, Redwood City, CA.

      Direct movement generation has been done.  See the SIGGRAPH
videos.  Girard's "Eurythmy" has some good human animated humans.
The paper is in the 1988 SIGGRAPH proceedings.

      I like Mike Kass's approach, but he hasn't developed it to the
point that human movement emerges.  I'd suggest work in this area as a
PhD thesis topic for someone.

      Various body recording schemes have been developed.  If you wanted
to record body movement without interfering with motion, I'd suggest putting
your subject in a unitard with an irregular pattern of angled lines and dots,
videotaping from multiple angles, aligning the images via convolution, and
extracting the limb positions.  Non-trivial.

						John Nagle