Publications related to Dynamic Obstacle Clearing for Real-time Character Animation

From finger animation to full-body embodiment of avatars with different morphologies and proportions

VR (Virtual Reality) is a real-time simulation that creates the subjective illusion of being in a virtual world. This thesis explores how integrating the user's body and fingers can be achieved and beneficial for the user to experience VR. At the advent of ...

EPFL2023

The neuromechanics of animal locomotion: From biology to robotics and back

Auke Ijspeert, Pavan P Ramdya

Robotics and neuroscience are sister disciplines that both aim to understand how agile, efficient, and robust locomotion can be achieved in autonomous agents. Robotics has already benefitted from neuromechanical principles discovered by investigating anima ...

AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE2023

Investigating the neuromechanical control of healthy gait modulation and pathological gaits observed in cerebral palsy using neuromuscular simulations

Andrea Di Russo

Locomotion is based on a sophisticated interaction among the environment, the musculoskeletal system, the spinal cord, and the brain locomotor areas. Quality of life is strongly related to the proper capability of this movement. However, many pathologies, ...

EPFL2023

Beyond undulation! Body morphology and sensing components of elongated animals and robots reveal skills to maintain competent locomotion

Laura Isabel Paez Coy

Locomotion is an essential evolutive innovation of living beings that allows them to colonize and dominate the planet. As diverse as animal morphologies are (living) and were (extinct), their locomotion modalities are also diverse. In particular, animal mo ...

EPFL2023

Integration of feedforward and feedback control in the neuromechanics of vertebrate locomotion: a review of experimental, simulation and robotic studies

Auke Ijspeert

Animal locomotion is the result of complex and multi-layered interactions between the nervous system, the musculo-skeletal system and the environment. Decoding the underlying mechanisms requires an integrative approach. Comparative experimental biology has ...

Company Biologists Ltd2023

Investigating the roles of reflexes and central pattern generators in the control and modulation of human locomotion using a physiologically plausible neuromechanical model

Auke Ijspeert, Andrea Di Russo, Dimitar Yuriev Stanev, Anushree Bapusaheb Sabnis, Stéphane Armand

Objective. Studying the neural components regulating movement in human locomotion is obstructed by the inability to perform invasive experimental recording in the human neural circuits. Neuromechanical simulations can provide insights by modeling the locom ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2023

Neuromechanical Simulations of Animats with Decentralised Control

Jonathan Patrick Arreguit O'Neill

The transition from aquatic to terrestrial environments represents a significant event in the history of evolution. For this transition to occur, animals had to adapt their morphology, physiology and locomotory skills to handle the challenges and interacti ...

EPFL2023

Real-time Self-contact Retargeting of Avatars down to Finger Level

Ronan Boulic, Bruno Herbelin, Mathias Guy Delahaye

We interact with the world through a body that includes hands and fingers. Likewise, providing an avatar allowing the control of a virtual body with fingers is an important step to improve the user experience in VR. When the user and their avatar skeleton ...

The Eurographics Association2023

Combining accelerometry with allometry for estimating daily energy expenditure in joules when in-lab calibration is unavailable

Kamiar Aminian, Pritish Chakravarty

Background All behaviour requires energy, and measuring energy expenditure in standard units (joules) is key to linking behaviour to ecological processes. Animal-borne accelerometers are commonly used to infer proxies of energy expenditure, termed 'dynamic ...

BMC2023

Puppeteer and Marionette: Learning Anticipatory Quadrupedal Locomotion Based on Interactions of a Central Pattern Generator and Supraspinal Drive

Auke Ijspeert, Guillaume Denis Antoine Bellegarda, Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

Quadruped animal locomotion emerges from the interactions between the spinal central pattern generator (CPG), sensory feedback, and supraspinal drive signals from the brain. Computational models of CPGs have been widely used for investigating the spinal co ...

IEEE2023