Techniques for active embodiment of participants in virtual environments

This paper presents preliminary work in the development of an avatar driver. An avatar is the graphical embodiment of a user in a virtual world. In applications such as small team, close quarters training and mission planning and rehearsal, it is important that the user`s avatar reproduce his or her motions naturally and with high fidelity. This paper presents a set of special purpose algorithms for driving the motion of the avatar with minimal information about the posture and position of the user. These algorithms utilize information about natural human motion and posture to produce solutions quickly and accurately without the need for complex general-purpose kinematics algorithms. Several examples illustrating the successful applications of these techniques are included