Computational Design and Motion Control for Characters in the Real World

Figure 1: Examples of real-world characters: an autonomous dog-like robot capable of traversing challenging environments; squishy digital characters converted into fabricated prototypes that deform in prescribed ways; 3D printed mechanical characters designed to produce user-specified motions. Computer graphics techniques allow artists to realize their imagi-native visions, leading to immersive virtual worlds that capture the imagination of audiences world-wide. And now, thanks to advance-ments in rapid manufacturing devices, tangible links between these vivid virtual worlds and our own can be created. But in order to unleash the full potential of this technology, a key challenge lies in determining the fundamental principles and design paradigms that allow digital content to be processed into forms that are suitable for fabrication. A particularly challenging task is that of creating physical representations of animated virtual characters. This paper discusses several techniques that can be applied towards this goal. In particular, a method for controlling the deformation behavior of real-world objects is described, and a computational design system that allows casual users to create animated mechanical characters is presented. In addition, this paper shows that control algorithms de-veloped for physics-based character animation can also be applied to legged robots, allowing them to move with skill and purpose