Physics-based control of virtual characters in low frequency simulations



Samuel Carensac Nicolas Pronost Saida Bouakaz
Université de Lyon, CNRS, Université Lyon 1 Université de Lyon, CNRS, Université Lyon 1 Université de Lyon, CNRS, Université Lyon 1
LIRIS - UMR5205 LIRIS - UMR5205 LIRIS - UMR5205





Abstract :
Using a lower simulation frequency for physics-based control of virtual characters frees computation time that can be used for more complex environment. However, using low simulation frequency may introduce instabilities inside the simulation. In this paper, we demonstrate that even a simple control strategy can be used at a low simulation frequency by adapting the control parameters. Indeed we show that lower frequencies hold a more restrictive space of possible control parameters than higher ones. We propose a method to find optimized control parameters for frequencies as low as 200Hz. As using such low frequencies may introduce foot-ground contact instabilities, we also introduce an additional control feedback on the stance leg. Our controller shows similar robustness as high frequency controller while using 0.8ms per simulation step.

Paper :
Paper presented at the 30th Journées Françaises d'Informatique Graphique (J.FIG) 2017.
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Video :

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