Automating Autonomous Pedestrians

By Wei Shao, PhD

Shao's abstract and introduction explains how difficult it is to replicate realistic human walk cycles to give structure life. His thesis touches on a subject that I have been thinking about and that is the idea of the connection between viewer and animation. He is studying and exploring ways, in which the animation can be more believable. The beginning of his abstract sets a nice premise for his course of study. A sample of his abstract is below:

" State-of-the-art computer graphics modeling and rendering techniques can be used to create photorealistic imagery of static objects, but they do not yet enable the automated animation of human beings with anywhere near as much fidelity. This thesis addresses the challenge. Our focus is the emulation of real pedestrians in urban environments. To this end, we develop an entirely autonomous pedestrian model that requires no centralized, global control whatsoever and is capable of performing a variety of activities in synthetic urban spaces, such as a virtual train station."

Shao, Wei PhD. "Automating Autonomous Pedestrians". New York Universtiy Press. 2006.
http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3205679