Abstract:
Interactive physics-based simulations are now capable of reproducing a growing number of motion skills, often with a focus on generating agile-and-robust locomotion. In this talk, I review recent progress in simulation-based models of human and animal motion as used for computer animation, where they seek to replace simpler kinematic models based on motion-capture. We will discuss the roles of optimisation, control abstractions, and, more recently, guided policy search and deep learning. A wide variety of animated results will be shown to illustrate the capabilities of current methods. I’ll also identify several research directions where we still need to see significant progress.
Biography:
Michiel van de Panne is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UBC, with research interests that span computer graphics, computer animation, and robotics, with a strong focus on modelling human and animal motion and the motor skills that underly their movement. He recently completed 10 years as a Canada Research Chair in Computer Graphics and Animation at UBC. In 2002, he co-founded the ACM/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA), the leading forum dedicated to computer animation research, and has served for many years on its steering committee. He has served as Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Graphics and regularly serves on program committees that include ACM SIGGRAPH and SCA. He has served as conference co-chair for CAS 1997, SCA 2002, Graphics Interface 2005, SBIM 2007, and SCA 2011. His research has been recognised with an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement and grants from NSERC, GRAND, Adobe, and MITACS. His research has been used in games, visual effects for film, games, and robotics.