Synthesis of constrained walking skills

Stelian Coros, Philippe Beaudoin, Kang Kang Yin, Michiel van de Pann
2008 ACM Transactions on Graphics  
Figure 1: Constrained walking skills. (a) Offline synthesis is used to generate physically-simulated motions for example problems. The example motions are used to develop a dynamics model that can make accurate step-to-step predictions. (b) This model can then be used by an online planner to navigate across constrained terrain. (c) A 3D physics-based character simulation plans steps to avoid stepping in crevasses. (d) A challenging terrain being navigated by the 3D model. Abstract Simulated
more » ... acters in simulated worlds require simulated skills. We develop control strategies that enable physically-simulated characters to dynamically navigate environments with significant stepping constraints, such as sequences of gaps. We present a synthesis-analysis-synthesis framework for this type of problem. First, an offline optimization method is applied in order to compute example control solutions for randomly-generated example problems from the given task domain. Second, the example motions and their underlying control patterns are analyzed to build a lowdimensional step-to-step model of the dynamics. Third, this model is exploited by a planner to solve new instances of the task at interactive rates. We demonstrate real-time navigation across constrained terrain for physics-based simulations of 2D and 3D characters. Because the framework sythesizes its own example data, it can be applied to bipedal characters for which no motion data is available.
doi:10.1145/1409060.1409066 fatcat:it5246oxbrasni4ekst75diyrq