Space Discretization for Efficient Human Navigation

Abstract

There is a large body of research on motion control of legs in human models. However, they require specification of global paths in which to move. A method for automatically computing a global motion path for a human in 3D environment of obstacles is presented. Object space is discretized into a 3D grid of uniform cells and an optimal path is generated between two points as a discrete cell path. The grid is treated as graph with orthogonal links of uniform cost. A' search method is applied for path finding. By considering only the cells on the upper surface of objects on which human walks, a large portion of the grid is discarded from the search space, thus boosting efficiency. This is expected to be a higher level mechanism for various local foot placement methods in human animation.