Pen-to-mime: Pen-based interactive control of a human figure

In this paper a pen-based intuitive interface is presented, that controls a virtual human figure interactively. Recent commercial pen devices can detect not only the pen positions but also the pressure and tilt of the pen. We utilize such information to make a human figure perform various types of motions in response to the pen movements manipulated by the user. The figure walks, runs, turns and steps along the trajectory and speed of the pen. The figure also bends, stretches and tilts in response to the tilt of the pen. Moreover, it ducks and jumps in response to the pen pressure. Using our interface, the user controls a virtual human figure intuitively as if he or she were holding a virtual puppet and playing with it. In addition to the interface design and implementation, this paper describes a motion generation engine to produce various motion based on varying parameters that are given by the pen interface. We take a motion blending approach and construct motion blending modules with a set of small number of motion capture data for each type of motions. Finally, we present the results from user experiments and comparison with a transitional gamepad-based interface. r 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.