Simple Feedforward Control for Responsive Motion Capture-Driven Simulations

Combining physically based simulation and motion capture data for animation is becoming a popular alternative to large motion databases for rich character motion. In this paper, our focus is on adapting motion-captured sequences for character response to external perturbations. Our technique is similar to approaches presented in the literature, but we propose a novel, straightforward way of computing feedforward control. While alternatives such as inverse dynamics and feedback error learning (FEL) exist, they are more complicated and require offline processing in contrast to our method which uses an auxiliary dynamic simulation to compute feedforward torques. Our method is simple, general, efficient, and can be performed at runtime. These claims are demonstrated through various experimental results of simulated impacts.