Collision-Free Path and Motion Planning for Anthropometric Figures

This paper describes a collision free path planning and animation system for anthropometric figures. It can also take into consideration the strength limit of human figures and plan the motion accordingly. The algorithm breaks down the degrees of freedom of the figure into Cspace groups and computes the free motion for each of these groups in a sequential fashion. It traverses the tree in a depth first order to compute the motion for all the branches. A special playback routine is then used to traverse the tree in a reverse order to playback the final motion. Strength value measures are incorporated directly into the searching function so that path computed will obey strength availability criteria. The planner runs in linear time with respect to the total number of Cspace groups. The planner can interface with other simulation techniques to simulate complex human motions. We believe that the planner would find a path in most cases and is fast enough for practical use in a wide range of computer graphics applications.