Motion Editing with Data Glove

Commented on:

Drew Logsdon

Franck Norman

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Summary

In this paper, the authors develop a new method to edit captured motion data by using a data glove. They use the human fingers to simulate the motion of the legs of a human figure. In the case of walking, the animator would map the motion of the fingers to walking. After this, he could generate running by moving the fingers faster.

They used the P5 glove which can detect the position and orientation of the wrist. They divide the procedure to edit motion data into the capturing stage and the reproduction stage. In the capturing stage, they generate the mapping function that define the relationship between the motion of the fingers. The algorithm gathers parameters, such as the cycle of the motion, the minimum and maximum output value, duration of the motion and range. After this is completed, there is a reproduction stage, where the animator performs a new motion with the hand. It must be a similar but different motion.

Since the body can move in more directions than the fingers, they must determine the proper animated motion from the finger motions. They fixed the matching in advanced. For example, when the person walks, they move right leg forward and left arm back. They matched this motion by seting the middle finger to the left shoulder and index finger to the right shoulder.

They tested this by having an animator go through the process. First, the normal walking motion was mapped. Then, they did a hopping motion and walk in a zigzag path. It resulted in an unnatural motion.They found out many limitations of the mapping function, especially the requirement that the new motion must be similar to the old one.

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I think it is a good preliminary study into the possibility of motion editing. However, I think the project would have benefited from a better glove. Also, the mapping function relies too much on the finger movements. There are a lot of factors involved in our walking motion, so they need to account for this in the simulation. A lot of these factors cannot be measured from finger motions alone.