Analyzing and simulating human movement communicative qualities

Encoded with the principles of movement observation science, specifically Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) and its Effort and Shape components, our synthesis system has the power and flexibility to procedurally synthesize gestures based on key pose and time information plus Effort and Shape qualities. The acquisition system is to extract the Effort and Shape qualities from live performance and correlate with observations validated by LMA notators.

Primary funding: NSF IIS “Synthesis and Analysis of Communicative Gesture” (N. Badler and D. Metaxas, co-PIs)

•  L. Zhao and N. Badler. “Acquiring and validating motion qualities from live limb gestures.” Graphical Models 67(1), 2005, pp. 1-16.