Full Skeleton-based Virtual Human Animation: An Improved Design for SL Avatars

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a novel skeleton design for avatar animation. This design includes new bones, whose purpose is to meet the requirements of sign language (SL) synthesis. SL synthesis presents particular challenges regarding the processing of phonetic descriptions of signs to create animations. Although traditional animation techniques have solved the synthesis of signs, the proposed skeleton design allows for the simplification of the phonetic processing, the inverse kinematics calculations, and the collision avoidance processes. The proposed design has been tested to demonstrate that the generated animations have the same quality as the ones produced with state-of-the-art techniques. Importantly, the proposed structure reduces the time required for generating an animation by 52% compared to existing solutions and requires less storage resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Animation
• Avatar
• Computer graphics
• Graphical user Interfaces
• Sign language
• Software performance

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fernando López-Colino

Fernando López-Colino was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1983. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2005 and his PhD degree in computer science and telecommunication engineering from the same university in 2009. In 2005, he joined the Human Computer Technology Laboratory (HCTLab), focusing his research on sign language processing and synthesis applied to mobile devices. Since 2012, he has been an associate professor at the Polytechnic School (EPS-UAM).

Email: [email protected]

José Colás

José Colás was born in Puertollano, Spain, in 1965. He received his bachelor’s degree in telecommunication engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in 1990 and his PhD degree in telecommunications from the same university in 1999. In 1993, his group received the Reina Sofía Award for a research trajectory focused on mobile device technologies for disability. In 2001, he founded the Human Computer Technology Laboratory (HCTLab) at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. This group received the Infanta Cristina Award in 2003 and 2011 for their research related to new technologies for disability with a focus on mobile devices.

Email: [email protected]

Javier Garrido

Javier Garrido was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1954. He received the BSc degree in 1974, the MSc degree in 1976, and the PhD degree in 1984, all in physics, from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid. Since 1992, he has participated in the implementation of the Computer Science (1992) and Telecommunication (2002) engineering studies at the Polytechnic School (EPS-UAM), and he received his current position as Full Professor in 2010. From his incorporation into the EPS, he has extended his research interests to topics related to HW/SW applications on embedded systems (microcontrollers, microprocessors, FPGAs, and SOC devices) as platforms for wireless sensor nets (WSNs) or robotic sensor agents (RSAs).

Email: [email protected]