Simulation of Leaping, Tumbling, Landing, and Balancing Humans

Abstract

This thesis describes an approach for generating transitions between simulated human behaviors in which the designer concentrates effort on the creation of parameterized basis behaviors that can be combined together in an automatic fashion. The parameterization allows the generation of a wide variety of motions from a single basis behavior. If the behaviors are well designed, the exit states of one leaves the simulated character in a valid initial state for the next. This nesting of the input and output states allows easy transitions between behaviors and the generation of many complex behaviors from a small set of basis behaviors. I demonstrate this approach with four basis behaviors: leaping, tumbling, landing, and balancing. Each parameterized control system allows the user to specify properties of the desired behavior such as how high or far to jump and the number of somersaults to perform. I demonstrate transitions between the basis controllers by generating a diverse set of behaviors, including a standing broad jump, vertical leap, forward somersault, backward somersault, back handspring, and various platform dives.